


The Retainment Organisation for Lucid Liathdaonna

by naturalselection



Series: Saltwater Room [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naturalselection/pseuds/naturalselection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having fought for their right to live, Vriska, Tavros and Sollux, and the other Beta trolls have now been accepted into the Retainment Organisation, and must now begin their training to take their place as the Condesce's best soldiers. They must fight against one another to crown the best team, a situation only made worse at the invention of the tyrian fog, a drug that causes increased aggression in almost all the mutants, not to mention the meddling to regain the body parts lost in these fights.<br/>But with rumours of an apocalyptic flooding of the planet by the Condesce, time is running out for a chance to escape.</p><p>The story is sci-fi and dystopian mostly, with adventure, romance and a Battle Royale/Hunger Games feel to it, set on Earth in roughly 2090.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gross, liquorice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The journey to the town square was difficult for all of the four remaining groups, namely due to the paranoia of death that seeped into all their minds as soon as they left their shelter. But it was an especially hard journey for that of Group Eight due to the nature of the injuries that plagued them. Sollux, the member of their team in best health, pushed Tavros's wheelie-chair through the silent, dusty streets, with the people he chauffeured offering little companionship… mainly due to one of them being passed out, and the other doing his best to keep her from falling to the ground.

A trail of blue blood followed them closely, the source of this path being Vriska's arm, or rather, the stub where the arm had once been. They had the actual arm with them as well, though, just in case they could somehow reattach it… but if honest, they had little hope for reattachment due to the condition of what remained of her arm; it was in about three pieces, with much of the flesh missing from the forearm, and the hand (or what remained of it), well, there was no way that she would ever be able to used those mangled remains again. But she was a blue-blood, so perhaps they could grow her a new one. The arm pieces joined her boiler-suit, which she hadn't been wearing when the orb exploded having washed it the night before. It was slightly funny in a morbid way, that she had taken the time to wash the article of clothing only to have it coated with more of her own blood in her bag.

In the square, groups Nine and Seven were waiting for the others to finally arrive so that they could get started on entering T.R.O.L.L. They had already introduced themselves to the other group due to the nature of their final murders. If Gamzee had not appeared and torn Essair from Nepeta, then Nepeta probably would have died, and the opening needed for Aradia to shoot the other member of Group One would not have arisen. To put it into simpler terms, it would have been Group One stood in the sun rather than Group Seven. Speaking of such things, Equius was still grovelling at the indigo-blood's feet, thanking him as if his life depended upon it… which if you thought about it, it kind of had. But it was still hideously embarrassing for Nepeta to watch his constant praise and submission, because the high-blood clearly did not give a shit.

"Thank you, grand highblood, for taking the time to save my sister. I apologise for the fact that you had to touch a yellow blood to do that, however."

"Ha, seriously, bro, it was a fucking pleasure." The stoner gave him a slow smile, slightly uncomfortable at the attention he was receiving, which grated with the lack of spoor-slime he had been having in the past few days.

"Oh my god, is that Vriska?" Terezi grinned after seeing the mane of hair in the distance, or rather after sniffing it.

Karkat pulled his gaze away from the amusing Equius to look in the direction that Terezi was pointing, "Who?"

"She has, like, _loads_ of hair, pretty tanned… no wait, not anymore, he he. She has an expression like this," Terezi then proceeded to pull what she thought was a befitting expression, which was a sort of eerie, malicious smile. Karkat commented that he could see no difference in her face. "Whatever, Karkles."

"Tavros!" Aradia called, seeing him behind Vriska's slumped form and waving with big arches of her arms, yet she could soon see that something was wrong. "Tavros?"

Why was he not walking? Why was Sollux pushing Tavros and Vriska along on a wheelie-chair, why? Ideas began to float around in her mind, piecing themselves together but none were particularly nice. Panicking, she hurled the bow and arrow down onto the floor and began to sprint towards the eighth group. Did Vriska do something to him?

Skidding to a halt, she stopped before the chair, barely taking in Vriska sat on his lap, with Tavros's arms wrapped securely around her middle to stop her falling and Sollux's confused glance.

"Uh, hey Aradia." Tavros said, looking up at her form.

"Tavros? Are you okay? What… why are you not standing? Il y a une raison?" she panted.

A small wave of panic passed over his face, but he quickly gained control of it and replied, "We didn't eat much, and I'm, uh, pretty scrawny, so I've been getting dizzy spells. I can't really walk long distances without collapsing."

Sollux gave him a slightly confused look, but did not interrupt his ruse; evidently wanting to protect Vriska… but as to why he wanted to do that… Sollux hadn't a clue. "Yeah, he'th being a panthy."

"Shoosh! Don't be so rude!" Aradia smirked, playfully swatting at his arm.

"I, uh, think Vriska's the one you should be paying attention to." Despite the fact that she had removed his ability to walk on his legs forever (not that Aradia was to know this), he still worried for her.

"What… what happened to her arm?"

"Someone set a trap for her, and they, uh, well they blew her arm off. She's pretty, uh, lucky though."

"How is this lucky? She's not even, euh, conscious!" Aradia quickly checked the bindings on the blue-blood's arm. The bindings seemed fairly secure, but much blood was still seeping through the fabric of the sheets they had used as makeshift bandages.

"What's wrong with Vriska?" Terezi demanded as she too joined the group of mutants. Inhaling deeply, she tried to piece together what she could sense, but all she was getting was a hell of a lot of blue. Well shit. "What is it?"

"The'th lucky becauthe the bomb wath obviouthly meant to kill. Tho jutht losing an arm ith pretty fucking good conthidering."

"She's lost an _arm?"_ Definitely shit.

" _H-ello_!" Feferi cried as they got to the village square. "Oh my glub, Aradia, vous est pas mort! Well don-e!"

The princess embraced the French girl tightly, as if they had been friends for years rather than hours. Aradia was not sure what to do in such situations, but gave her a friendly pat on the back nevertheless. Encouraging such friendships between high-bloods and low bloods was good.

"Bonjour, Feferi. Ça va?"

"Oui, merci! Et vous?"

Aradia gave her a quick nod before the wheelie-chair reached the centre of the square, and she went to pick up her bag where she had stored a small supply of bandages and other medical supplies. They had no idea how long it would take for them to be taken into T.R.O.L.L, so it would do well for Vriska to be properly treated. There was about ten or fifteen centimetres left of her arm before the flesh was striped from bone, and only a couple more centimetres extending from this of bone.

"Oh dear. I take it this is the worst of our injuries?" Kanaya gasped as she approached. "Besides the countless people that we have, ah, people whose places we have taken."

The Russian then noticed Gamzee's tall form by a bench and made a beeline towards him, enquiring about the state of her childhood memento. Sure, Vriska was cute, but she did not know her well enough to stick around to gawk at her injury when there were bigger fish to fry.

"I trust that you have kept my book safe, Gamzee?"

Yet before he could say a word in reply, a strange shooshing sound filled the area as a square of black opened into the sky – a hole – and from this a lift slowly descended into the village, supported by thick steel cords.

With a soft and oddly menacing 'ding!' the doors slid open, cheery music playing on the inside pouring out to greet the survivors.

"Uh… is this actually happening?" Terezi rose an eyebrow at the scene before her. "Elevator music? For the lift into the freaky 'retainment organisation'? This woman's a bit of a creep."

"Well. As I believe you say. May as well get it over with, non, Nepeta?" Aradia smirked in the direction of her team mate. Poor Nepeta had had to be carried for the journey to the square, Equius worried that the girl would pass out any moment due to the pounding she had received. Yet after a sit down, she was feeling somewhat better.

With a flash of her wicked teeth, Nepeta grinned, "Yup, that's purrfectly correct usage of the term."

With a small amount of hassle, the twelve trolls got into the room of the lift. It was not a particularly large lift, and with the addition of Tavros's wheelie-chair there was little space.

"Wwould you _shift_ already, low-blood?"

"Watch your language, thit-head."

 _"OW!_ Whose fucking horns were they?"

"Sorry, Karkat!"

"Cease your lewd language towards her."

"I'll clean my fucking language up when I fucking want to. Which for your information, won't be any fucking time soon."

"Come on, that was just lame, Karkles." Terezi cackled, covering Karkat's mouth with a hand to prevent any further continuation of the conversation.

The lift continued to shift for what felt like an hour to Tavros, but can't have been more than five minutes. Vriska's blood had long since begun to seep through the trousers of his boiler suit, but due to the nature of his injuries he could not feel a thing. Not the warmth or the blood, nor the stickiness of it, or even the dead weight of Vriska on his lap. In fact, if she was not slumped on him he may well have begun to freak out again, and unconsciously his grip around her waist increased. She was currently a stand in for Tinkerbull, and he hoped that she would not mind… ha, who was he kidding? If she found out that he was hugging her not only for her own security, but also his, she would have a major freak out.

With another 'ding!' the lift came to a gentle stop, and the children slowly got out. After what they had been put through last time they were here, they could not say they were looking on their next period of time in the retainment organisation.

Waiting for them was a group of twelve men and women in pale blue-green outfits. Medics.

"Three of us have each been allocated to your teams as to heal any injuries you have received. So separate into your original groups now," One ordered, and indeed the order was soon done, as this woman was clearly of the same blood caste as Eridan, and so commanded the attention of all. "We are all specialised in your respective blood castes and will do our best to help you. Now, Group Ten, with me."

Each of the three remaining teams of medics called for a group, and they then headed off to different wings of the floor they were on.

* * *

Which Group would you like to follow?

**== > Uhh…**

Group _'uhh'_ not recognised. Please try again.

**== > Bluh, stupid computers! Oh whatever, go with Group Eight**

Group ' _Bluh, stupid computers! Oh whatever, go with Group Eight_ ' not recognised. Please try again.

**== > Group Eight!**

You are now Sollux Captor, and you are fed up with puthing your team mateth around everywhere already

Upon seeing Vriska's condition, the cerulean-blooded medic's eyes widened and he quickly ushered them towards a room. Inside, a hard looking bed stood in the centre of the room, with two chairs pushed up against the wall and an operating robot on hand in the corner.

"I had not known that her injury was this bad." he muttered as he pulled various objects from the cabinets and drawers that lined one of the walls before lifting Vriska up and placing her gently upon the bed.

"How did you know in the firtht place?" Sollux asked.

"Oh, uh, from the first glance I gave you."

Sollux, ever the cynic, soon picked up on his subtle hints. "You had camerath thet up in the village, right? To keep an eye on uth."

"Quite, yes, I suppose that there is no use in the delaying the matter anymore. Although I hardly believe that you would assume we weren't keeping an eye on you all." The cerulean-blooded doctor amused Sollux. It was funny to think that this is how Vriska should really be. Most people of her blood type were fairly odd as the castes went. Because they were only just blue-bloods, they often felt the need to do extra-special things to make up for that dash of green in their blood. Things such as becoming interesting professionals, or getting jobs with high prestige in society, or things such as speaking in a distinctly upper-class way. Or even things as odd as having the most elaborate houses, achieved only by saving the money they got until their homes could rival that of the indigo-bloods. Yes, Vriska was nothing like the man before them, having lived in terraced housing in an area dominated by green-blooded castes of all types: lime green, teal and olive.

"Have you got any of the arm's remains? The smoke created by the bomb rather obscured the camera, I'm afraid."

**== > Retrieve arms**

Ath if that gag hath not been over uthed. But nonetheleth, you pull out the three pieceth of her arm that remain and hand them to the doctor

"Ah. Yes, these will not do. We may well have to grow her a new one then."

"You would, uh, pay for that? I'm fairly certain that's, uh, pretty expensive stuff to do." Tavros commented, then when he noticed the look the doctor was giving him soon slunk down low into his seat, his nervous grin adorning his face.

"Well, that is all. You may now accompany them to their respective rooms." the blue-blood ordered once more with a flick of his wrist, indicating that the other two doctors leave as well.

The first of these other doctors was an olive-blooded woman with a hard face, and the other, the vivid blue of Equius's caste. Odd. People of that blood colour tended to get fairly shirty about those of lower castes than they ordering them around. Sollux frowned, something odd was going on. Odder than the use of children as what were essentially gladiators anyway.

"Mr Nitram, we have reasons to believe that you are either unable to stand due to pain tolerance levels, or that you have been paralyzed," the blue-blood said as Sollux wheeled the boy down the twisting corridors. "Could you please confide to us what has occurred?"

"Well, uh, I was pushed out of a window and landed on my back. And now my legs, uh, and now they feel… invisible. Wow, I'm sure there was a better way to say that," A nervous grin worked its way onto his face with little challenge as he began to ramble in his characteristic faltering manner. "Anyway, that's really all there is, uh, to report on the subject, of me getting hurt."

"So the blue-blood pushed you out of a window, is what you are saying."

"Uh, yes."

"Where do your senses stop?"

"About the small of my back. Uh…" Tavros reached his hand down the back of the chair to point, but then realised that it would not help them much. Most could not see through chairs. "Well, uh, yeah. You get the idea."

"I'm afraid that we may not be able to treat you, Mr Nitram. As of yet, you have not developed any talents, so the stem cell therapy cannot be funded. Unlike with your team mate, Ms Serket."

"Tho you're thaying 'get freaky thuper-human powerth, or we won't heal your thpine'? Way to be dickth."

The olive-blood pursed her lips, containing any anger that may break her calm mask. "And Mr Captor. We presume all is well with you?"

"Other than the rethidual poithon in my veinth, yeah. Doing pretty fucking good," he replied, sarcasm tinting his words a slight yellow that Terezi would have picked up straight away. "Can't you take my treatment cothtth and tranthfer them to him?"

With a small, sad smile that one might give a child whom relieved themselves upon the floor in attempt to show you how well they could use their potty, the blue-blood said, "Noble as your suggestion is, that is not how our system works here, Mr Captor."

The olive-blood took control of the wheelie-chair from Sollux, and carted Tavros into a room similar to that of Vriska's, leaving Sollux alone with the blue-blood. Like with his team mates, he was soon led into a medical room and told to lie down on the cold slab of metal in the centre. He shivered as he stretched back, and thought that it could do with one of those many bed sheets Feferi was telling them about _excit-edly_ while in the lift. How odd that they would have so many bed sheets in one house…

"You will have been shot with one of our respiratory inhibitors. You are lucky to have been given the antidote within ten minutes of injection, or the damage to your body would have been permanent, even with the assistance of nanos and stem cells. They can't work miracles." the doctor commented as they worked on him, taking blood samples and generally prodding him all over. Yet it was soon over and done with, and Sollux was sent to a waiting room with the knowledge that he 'seemed to be okay'. Well thanks.

After a couple dozen minutes, Tavros wheeled himself in on a wheelchair, the kind that were made for those unable to walk, as opposed to a wheelie-chair with a belt. Evidently the doctors had decided that he was not worth the costs of treatment and so had decided to leave him disabled. Waving off his concerns, Tavros told him that while his spine was not fixed, his general cuts, including the large one on his back that had been causing him issues, had been healed. Well, stitched and slathered with antiseptic at any rate.

"Do you know what they're doing to Vrithka?" Sollux asked the other boy of Group Eight. "Thince you were with them longer."

With a frown, Tavros replied, "I tried, uhh, asking. But they were pretty, uh, unresponsive. I don't think they're low-blood's biggest fans, really."

Sollux snorted, "Stuck up pricks."

* * *

**== > Vriska, wake already**

Right: you've got a head full of groggy, a belly full of period cramp and a left arm stuffed with… oh shit, you forgot about that. You are now Vriska Serket

What torture was this, Vriska pondered as she slowly regained consciousness. It felt like someone had taken an umbrella and were currently trying to slowly twist it through her lower abdomen. Like tiny little people in her stomach were punching her innards with a vengeance. Like a particularly angry hive of bees had decided there was pollen inside of her, and were now trying to break in through the means of repeated stinging, boring holes until they created a gap they could fly through. The pain came and receded like waves on the beach, indicating that whatever anaesthetic they were using for her arm and eye were local, because hell if it was having any effect on the agony in her gut. Welcome to period cramps.

Sweeping the hair from her face with one hand, the other… nope never mind. Only one hand… she had to get used to that quickly or bad things would happen. Opening her eyes… no, _eye._ Opening her eye a crack, she noticed that the depth of the room was destroyed since she had also lost the ability to see in one eye due to the incident with the magic eight ball. Ugh, she really should have seen through that. Pun unintentional.

The room she had awoken in was painted a pleasingly dark green, easy on her damaged eyes… not to mention the artist within her. A dark-red hardwood created panelling up to the middle height of the walls, with furniture in matching wood and a dark parquet floor. An immense grandfather clock rested against one of the walls, filling the room with a soft tick-tock that filled her with an incredibly contradictory mixture of serenity and apprehension, however that worked. The chair she had been placed in was a vast armchair in similar green and brown-red hues as the rest of the room. In the centre sat a large mahogany desk with several organised clumps of paper stacked high, a dip pen along with other assorted stationary, and a strange white bowl filled with dark little sweets in the shape of Scottie dogs. Bluh, she hated those little rats.

Odd, for such a room to be in T.R.O.L.L. Something just seemed terribly off, but she could not quite figure out for the life of her what it was; probably because the soft tick-tock was calming her a great deal more than it should have been. Perhaps that was a side effect of the drugs pumping through her system.

"Please, feel free to help yourself to a liquorice. I my self are rather partial to such sweets." At the sound of the smooth American accent, Vriska turned in her seat, only to find that the high back hid the person who had entered. Instead, she looked back at the bowl on the table. Ugh, just her luck. Free food, and it was something she did not like.

"I don't like liquorice." she said, and pushed the bowl further away from her.

"Then I apologise. I shall be sure to use a different sort the next time we speak." Who was this? And why were they so concerned over what sweets she liked for heavens sake? Surely what with the kidnap of dozens of children, they would care little for something as insubstantial as getting the right sweets.

With a soft sigh from the velvet of the chair, the man behind her sat opposite to Vriska on the other side of the desk. He wore an immaculate white suit, and underneath this, a green shirt and bow-tie. Yet that was not what shot the warning signals to her brain. On his head, or rather where his head should be, was a giant white orb.

"Uh…" Then with a quick self-berate for sounding like Tavros, Vriska said, "What's with the headgear?"

"This? I beg your pardon for any inconveniences, but it is to prevent you from controlling my actions with your abilities."

A flicker of fear passed through her stomach. "What are you talking about?"

"Come, let us not spend an hour debating useless matters," the man chuckled in a good-natured fashion. We have been watching you all closely while you inhabited the village arena, and we have all taken a certain amount of interest in your abilities. You are able to control others actions merely by looking them in the eye. Astonishing!"

"Thanks?"

"You are quite welcome, my dear. Now then, the reason that I had you brought to my office is simple. We have found a small… complication on your treatment plans."

"What?"

"While your talents are certainly extraordinary, they are not enough to cover the treatment costs of growing you another fully functional arm. The more one has to grow, the more it costs. Although if these powers further develop, then you may be in for a chance at another human arm as we will be able to create a profit from them," The man paused to adjust the odd white orb atop his head before continuing. "Well, that is all I wish to speak of. You may leave now. And send Mr Zahhak in on your way out, if you please."

Vriska rose from the chair and turned to where she assumed the door would be (since, you know, being brought into a room when you're unconscious tends to leave one a little disoriented), and left. Outside, her one working eye complained at the harsh lighting that suddenly met her, made worse by the reflective white walls surrounding her. When her vision returned, she noticed Equius sat by the door looking disgustingly sweaty, and said, "Hey, you're next, clammy."

With a nod, he got up and went into the room, but not before saying, "You should probably find something to cover yourself with."

Looking down at herself, she discovered that she was wearing nothing more than underwear and a hospital gown. Perverts. Well, that would explain why that Equius bloke was sweating all over the place.

Within seconds of standing uselessly in the hallway, a doctor appeared.

"Come with me, Ms Serket." he commanded, and without checking to see if she would follow, began to march down one of the corridors. Not wanting to get lost, she went along him.

After a couple of minutes, she broke the silence, "So do you have GPS in your head or what?"

The blue-blooded doctor stopped and turned to look at her. "Excuse me?"

"As in, is there a micro-chip implanted in your thick skull that allows one to know their directions in this maze." she said, slowly and sarcastically. "Or would you like me to phrase it differently again?"

"Ah. The drugs must be making you bad tempered."

"Not really." Vriska shrugged. "So where the fuck am I?"

"You would do well to clean up your language, Ms Serket. We are cerulean-bloods. We have an image to uphold!" he sighed as he guided them down another corridor, each as featureless as the last.

"Oh, you're one of those weird ones aren't you?" she snorted. "You guys make me almost embarrassed to be a blue-blood sometimes."

His neutral expression was beginning to look strained when he opened a set of double doors and said, "We have arrived. If you should need to contact me, ask for Dr Kajeor."

With a gentle push into the room, the doors were shut once more and she found herself in another green room. The walls were the same dark green, yet there was none of the hardwood panelling in here, and the floor was a faux-wood linoleum. Two tables sat side by side, with long benches on either side as seats, and on these most of the mutants that had fought for places in the establishment. Quickly spotting Tavros and Sollux, she headed for their table and took a seat next to the disabled boy, noting the folded up wheelchair propped up on the wall behind him.

"Missed me?" she grinned, amused by Tavros's flushed expression at the extent of back and leg shown by the hospital gown, although a few of them were wearing such outfits, well, Feferi and Tavros anyway.

"Thit, thought we got rid of you." Sollux drawled, fiddling on his iPhone and looking cut off from the world.

In the voice of the cerulean-blooded doctor, Dr Kajeor, she laughed, "Quite sorry, but no."

"Wriska? Wwhat the fuck are you doin' at our table?" Eridan demanded as he approached the table that held Group Eight and Feferi, also in a hospital gown as he sat. Vriska noted with a small amount of appreciation at his nice body.

"Sitting, I believe." Vriska smirked. "You, fish boy?"

"Fish boy? Wwoww you're runnin' out a' ideas."

"Eridan." Feferi said in a warning tone.

When the boy said nothing further, Vriska sneered, "'Atta boy, Eridan."

 _"Quiet!"_ The head guard had returned, along with the remainder of the children. Kanaya was the last to sit at their table, seating herself with an elegant fold opposite Vriska. While he wore the same outfit as before, and the same generally hard expression, there was an undercurrent of pride. "Now that we are all here, I would like to congratulate you on surviving. That all twelve of you managed to beat the others off is a great achievement.

'Now then. From now onwards, we have a new schedule for you all. Groups Seven and Nine have been grouped to form the Blue Team, and groups Eight and Ten will be the Red Team. Now then, it is currently one in the afternoon, so after lunch, you shall have a brief tour of the area, and after that you will be splitting into your four groups once more for some training. Now then, do we have any questions?"

Vriska raised her hand, "When can I get some decent clothes again?"

* * *

Your name is Kanaya Maryam.

Unlike many people your age, you have taken a shining to LANDSCAPING. You had cultivated a lush oasis around your home, and in particular, honed your craft through the art of TOPIARY. You have embraced the tool of this trade, which is CONVENIENT since this is the weapon you FOUND FIRST upon entering the village. Almost as if it was PRE-PLANNED. But that's silly.

You are one of the few humans with JADE GREEN BLOOD. As such you are one of the few raised by the VIRGIN MOTHER QUEEN, another jade-blood who has sacrificed her position to raise you. A position which involves the careful and delicate processes of PREVENTING HARMFUL MUTATIONS from entering the gene pool. Oh the delicious irony.

Another thing you enjoy are tales of RAINBOW DRINKERS and SHADOW DROPPERS and FORBIDDEN PASSION. You are also are one of the few that have developed a zeal for FASHION and DESIGN and LIVELY COLOURFUL PATTERNS. You are a SEAMSTRESS or a RAGRIPPER or a TREETRIMMER or a LUMBERJACK, whichever you care to be.

Most of the people in your home town of Moscow are too busy with their RADIATION SUITS in case of stray radiation sneaking in from the bombs. But pish posh. That's a load of RUBBISH and so you made an effort to LOOK GOOD before you were taken away. However, they were not the ones carted off because of a blotch of grey skin appearing on their cheeks, so MAYBE THEY WERE ONTO SOMETHING THERE.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	2. An eye for an eye and a spinal chord

Lunch was a simple affair, made up of some chicken soup and rolls of soft white bread. Ordinarily a number of them would have commented on how rubbish it was. Yet for the twelve mutants who had eaten nothing but cold, tinned food for the past few days it was comparable to eating ambrosia at the table of the gods. For groups eight and ten, they ate at a fairly relaxed pace, with Eridan making an effort to eat elegantly as to show off his caste and how he was better than them. This did nothing to offset how silly he looked in a hospital gown. Meanwhile, on the table composed of the Blue Team's members, all were wolfing their food down and demanding seconds within minutes of being served.

Despite any airs and graces he was trying to show, Equius was not succeeding as Eridan had at eating nicely, although no one noticed as his table was a little preoccupied with the food before them. In addition to his soup and bread, Gamzee had a bowl set before him of a strange, gelatinous, green substance which he called 'fucking miracles, bro.' when asked. Whatever it was, though, it did not look like it should be eaten.

After her third generous helping of soup, Aradia dabbed at the corners of her mouth with the edge of her sleeve, making sure that there was not anything on her face. Nepeta too ate unnaturally sophisticatedly on her forth bowl, and the Parisian suspected that it had something to do with the scowling boy sat before her. Under all of the frowning, he was a little attractive, she guessed, but not really her type. She preferred guys that could take a joke… not that she really had much experience with the whole boyfriend thing. Looking up, she met Sollux's eyes across the room and quickly looked back down at her food once more, trying not to grin. Okay, this was getting silly.

Lunch ended after exactly fifteen minutes, and they were separated into their four groups once more. The head of the three doctors who had treated Group Seven met them in the dining room.

"Ms Leijon, Ms Medigo and Mr Zahhak. Please follow me." she said with a smile, holding the door open for them. Due to her yellow blood, at first Equius had tried bossing her around, to get her to let them out and so on. When she merely smiled at him and told him to settle down, he threatened her with violence, and still smiling, she pulled out a cattle prod and struck him in the neck with it, making him fall to the ground in pain at the electricity passing through his system.

On the one hand, Aradia could see why the woman had done it, given that he had threatened to hurt her if she did not show them the way out. But electrocuting him? A little far really. Yet it soon became clear why. Since they had been watching them all the entire time they were in the village, they knew full well about Equius's insane strength and so decided that the only way to deal with him would be to use brains against brawn.

The tour of the facility really was brief, as there were very limited places that they were allowed to go. First they were shown the rooms where they would train in, which looked a lot like a gym, with running, cycling and rowing machines, weights and weapons for combat and strange climbing equipment that arched overhead. They were told that the weapons they used for most of the time in the village would be the one they were trained with, except obviously for Equius this was not applicable. Another thing they were told is that they would be given help in discovering their 'abilities'… whatever that meant.

After this, they were shown once more to the medical rooms in case of an emergency (although the medic assured them they would not be roaming free in the hallways anyway). Finally, they met up with the other half of the Blue Team and were shown the area where they would sleep. It was a very strange room, with a floor space of three metres by two metres before they saw the beds they would be sleeping in. Like the capsule hotels that once occurred in Tokyo, the rest of the room was made up of six pod-like bed capsules. Three of these capsules lay next to each other a couple of feet off the ground, and then with another brief gap of wall, another three of these embedded into the wall.

"Girls on the bottom row, boys on the top." Group Nine's medic said. Then pointing to one on the top row, the mutants noticed that it seemed to be a lot more reinforced than the others, lacking the transparent window the other capsule beds had and instead donning a thick sheet of reinforced steel.

"The casing around your bed is inspired by that which they use to hold back meteors, Mr Zahhak. So your roommates needn't worry about you thrashing around in your sleep and pulling the whole place down." the Group Seven medic smiled serenely. "Now, to open them you press this button here and the door will swing open a little. From there you pull at the handle.

'There is a small area at the far end of your bedrooms where you can store your personal belongings. Bedtime is at nine pm sharp. You will be sent here and get in your individual pods, which will shortly be locked until seven am."

"Are we expected to get dressed in there?" Terezi asked, giving a sceptical look, or rather sniff, at the sleeping pods.

"I can assure you that it is possible. Now, each of you need to claim a space. To do this, simply place your hand on the button to open it."

Equius had no choice as to which pod was his, so with a shrug he stood before his space, with Nepeta claiming the space below him. Not particularly bothered, Aradia went for the closest space – the middle pod – with Gamzee above, and finally Terezi's pod was at the right and Karkat's over hers. The machine in the button gave a small hum as it shaped itself to the contours and whirls of the skin of their palm before the room fell silent once more and the doors to the pods swung open.

* * *

**== > Be someone claustrophobic**

You are now Vriska Serket, someone claustrophobic

One would have thought that being a spider enthusiast would remove all notions of claustrophobia from someone's mind, as everyone knew that arachnids wedged themselves into the narrowest nooks and crannies, shimmied through tiny gaps in plaster and lurked in the spaces between walls, waiting for their prey to wander into their grasp. But Vriska could not do it. Nope. No thank you, not today.

When the fear had first developed even sleeping in her room with the door fully closed was enough to rid her of a decent nights sleep. Lifts were amongst the worst, with a little residual fear and worry still fluttering through her nerves whenever she went in one.

Vriska had once gotten into a fight where the end result was being forcefully squashed into a wheelie-bin. It had been humiliating, utterly degrading and after the tortuous four hours spent locked in the blasted thing, enough to create a phobia. Thankfully, though, since the event that had caused it when she was eight, she had learnt to control and suppress it fairly well.

While the sleeping pods were spacious compared to the bin she had been shoved in, at a metre tall, a metre wide and two and a half metres long, it was still not exactly a huge space.

' _Get a grip_ ,' Vriska lectured herself mentally as she eased her way into the pod. ' _Stop being such a grub about this_.'

Sliding in on her back, she noticed the strange, slightly iridescent materiel that lined the ceiling. A computer screen if she ever saw one. Definitely that. To her left there was also an internet port, which although would be heavily restricted and monitored, should still be fairly amusing. Vriska felt a little uncomfortable in the heavily enclosed space, but as long as the door remained open she should be fine. Besides, she would have to sleep in here perhaps for the rest of her life, so she had better get used to it fast.

As if to spite her, the door to the pod suddenly snapped shut behind her and instantly she could feel her heartbeat begin to rise. With an aimed kick, she lashed out at the door, trying to get it to open again.

"Hey!  _Let me out_!" she ordered loudly, hoping their cerulean-blooded medic would hear and take pity on her. They were of the same blood caste after all, but it seemed she was having no such luck. Vriska kicked at the door again and again until she was thrashing about. "LET ME OUT!"

Barely thinking, she began to claw at anything nearby, getting into a stable position before kicking viciously at the door again and again. Soon the door was opened and the cold medic from Group Ten dragged her out, slapping her around the face to snap her out of the fear.

"Please gain a hold upon yourself. You are a young woman, not a deer in the headlights." she said, letting go of Vriska suddenly, resulting in her dropping to the floor. A door quickly swung shut above her. "If you find yourself unable to return into there, then-"

"No." With her hands on her knees to brace herself, Vriska took a deep breath before standing again. "I'm going to try again."

And so she did. When Group Ten's medic tried to intervene, the blue-blooded doctor stopped her, communicating silently in that odd way that doctors do. Once the other mutants had settled in and gotten bored, she stopped, deciding that she had prepared as much as possible. It was not ideal, but she would simply have to bite the bullet.

The two components of the Red Team then split and went their ways, Vriska giving Eridan an ironically sappy wave before they turned off.

"This is where you will be training." their medic announced as they entered a vast room, with walls sliding up ten or twenty metres easily, before curving around to form a glass, domed room. Sunlight managed to reach them through the dust caked windows, softly sinking into their skin and it was a feeling that Vriska had missed while in the fake world of the village.

Racks upon racks of swords lay in the room, accompanied by a strange assortment of lances and many targets and dummies for practice. In the centre of the floor space, a woman sat, seemingly meditating.

She had horns.

She had actual  _horns_. Beautiful swirling spirals coming from her head, coloured red at the base, then a rapid change into orange and another, final swap to a deep, rich yellow.

Vriska could not believe it. Horns? Seriously? With a hesitant movement, she felt the lumps on her head, and realised that there was a good chance that's what they would become. Horns.

"Hey." Vriska called out once the doctor had left. "Are you even awake?"

There was no response, as she continued to watch the swirling smoke rising from sandalwood imbued incense.

"Hello? Hey! I'm speaking to you! I said are you  _fucking awake_?"

With an inaudible thunk, the final chunk of ashes from the joss stick hit the curved surface of the incense-stick holder. Now she was done.

"Are  _you_?" they replied, and swivelled around to face them, still cross-legged. She was younger than they had initially thought, at no older than seventeen, with ashen grey skin and big red eyes. She bore an odd resemblance to someone, but at that period of time they could not figure out whom. Her hair was cut in a ragged bob, with two longer strands easily the length of her body. An odd hairstyle to say the least. In her strange, low voice, she told them, "I am going to be training you."

While her voice was low, there was nothing masculine about it, rather making her sound mature and classy when combined with her rich American accent.

"Show me what you can do, little bearcat." she said, a small grin adorning her face, although there was no humour to it.

Vriska returned this with her own smirk. "Are you sure you want me to? I'll ruin your little meditation session."

"Well that's a load of bull, kiddo, but you are welcome to try."

From the space behind her, she retrieved two long needles that seemed to be hair sticks… only far more deadly looking.

"Fetch a sword or knife, girl. You all balled up or something?" she asked. "Wouldn't want to kill an unarmed kid, as it would look a little terrible on my reputation."

As soon as Vriska's fingers tightened around the handle of an available sword, the woman leapt forwards, needles in hand, and slashed a notch of a cut across Vriska's forehead. This was soon accompanied by a knee to the stomach, which threw her to the ground.

Snarling, "Again," Vriska took the woman on again… and again, but no progress happened.

"Come on kid, don't be such a dumb Dora. I'm under specific instructions not to bump you off," she sneered, holding out a hand to pull the younger girl to her feet. "'sides, I'm supposed to helping these two as well."

With an ugly frown, Vriska accepted the hand and was helped up, standing upright once more.

"Now then, you, boy. I heard that your powers are the cat's pajamas. Prove it. Hit me with your eye-laser business."

"Uh… you realithe that I could kill you? Or are you jutht thuicidal?"

"I seriously doubt that you could kill me, kid."

Shrugging, Sollux slid the glasses up his face and turned towards her but… he just could not open his eyes.

"Before old age knocks me off, preferably."

He still kept his eyes screwed shut. Killing people, especially a low blood like him was something that he did not want to be doing. But before he knew what was happening, a pair of cool fingertips pried his eyelids open, and the optic blasts were unleashed, melting a hole through the glass and creating big globules of the now red liquid.

A bolt of pleasure shot through the woman's expression as she quickly shut his eyes, sliding the glasses back down again.

She patted his cheek patronisingly. "Well ain't that just the bee's knees." Then turning to Tavros, cocked her head a little, sliding the hair sticks through her belt while she said, "Can't see what I'll do with you."

"Probably, uh, not very much."

"Hmm." She marched over to the sword rack and picked a nasty looking blade. "I'm going to teach you the basics of sword play. Eyes, go practice on those dummies since you're incapable of trying to hit me. So. First step."

* * *

Once the post-training dinner was done, Red Team were escorted back to their dormitory, and from there left to their own devices. Getting into the space without shrinking back from fear was an issue for Vriska, but it was done nonetheless. Once she was inside the pod she tried distracting her mind by lying on her belly for a while, playing simple games with her dice.

As she had suspected, sleep did not come easily, and she tossed and turned frequently with no cure for the fear that danced across the surface of her mind.

While in a period of staring at the ceiling to bore herself to sleep, a small speech bubble appeared on the ceiling, confirming Vriska's theory that the entire thing was one big computer screen. However this was only one stage of the discovery. The other stage was actually answering what was presumably a message. Initially she tried to tap the icon on the ceiling with her fingertips, but that did absolutely nothing. It was then that she remembered the internet port lying innocently beside her.

Curling up onto her side with her back facing the port, Vriska delicately picked the end of the lead up in her fingers. She had originally planned to use her other hand to push the hair away from the access point as usual, but soon remembered her lack of left arm, and so sighed loudly, dropping the cable to shift the mass of hair from her upper neck. With a shudder that ran down her spine and out to her fingers and toes, she plugged the cable into the back of her neck, the metal end of it reaching into her skull and brushing lightly against the very edge of her brain. Instantly her body relaxed while her mind was shot into a sort of forced lucid dream.

Darkness surrounded the blue-blood's body; a dark so thick and heavy that she could not even see the tip of her nose. Before the dangerous hallucinations could grab her, she focused her mind and was catapulted into her homepage.

A strange land surrounded her with a vivid blue sea, purple and green foliage and a sky filled with maps. Vriska hadn't a clue how it made sense but it was the world that she had created, and she was proud of it, so whatever.

As expected, there were severe restrictions on the internet and she could do little more than chat to the other eleven mutants in their assemble, or browse the odd image on google. But the benefit was that her missing arm and eye were still in existence, giving her 20:20 vision once more. Wow it was a relief to be able to see properly again. Her sense of distance had been completely destroyed, and though she was loath to admit it, she'd had to rest her remaining hand on Tavros's wheelchair as they traveled around the retainment organization, lest she walk into something. It was funny in a way, as it had appeared that Vriska had been guiding Tavros, but in reality it had been the exact opposite.

The speech bubble popped up again, a strange symbol in its centre that was composed of a circle with strange horn like protrusions coming from the sides. It hovered in the sky before her and then transformed into a chat window at a mental command. A keyboard appeared in the air before her.

adiosToreador began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

AT: hEY, iS THIS vRISKA?

AG: Who else would have this name hotrod?

AG: Hey, w8

AG: adiosToreador... sounds familiar

AG: Did you FORP?

AT: uHH, wHY?

AG: Oh god, you ARE that adiosToreador!

AG: HAAAAAAAA!

AT: uHH, i UHH, dON'T SEE WHY THAT'S FUNNY,

AG: It's funny 8ecause I killed your character 8y shoving him off a cliff

AG: And I destroyed your real life legs 8y shoving you out a window

AG: Like it was meant to 8e

AG: ;;;;)

AT: oH, yOU'RE MINDFAND AREN'T YOU?

AG: Well done Sherlock!

AG: Any other revelations you would like to share?

AG: Or something else you should like to deliber8?

AT: nOT REALLY,

AT: i WAS ACTUALLY, uHH, lOOKING FOR aRADIA, i GUESS,

AT: dO YOU KNOW HER HANDLE?

AG: She pro8ably can't get online, 8eing a low 8lood

AG: And a maroon one at that

AG: W8 how are you on here?

AT: a LITTLE, uHH, kEYBOARD KINDA POPPED OUT, tHE POD SOMETIMES DOES WHAT YOU ASK IT TO,,

AT: aND THEN i USED THAT TO FIND PEOPLE TO CHAT WITH,

AT: i SAW YOU TRYING TO GET ONLINE WITH, uHH, USERNAME, sO i TYPED IT IN AND IT WORKED,

AT: iS THAT OKAY?

AG: OH, I'd assumed you'd somehow got a mind connection port installed since I last saw you ;;;;)

AG: Ha, as if you'd 8e that 8rave!

AG: That reminds me

AG: You know that woman in the training room?

AT: yEAH, uHH, wHAT ABOUT HER,,,

AG: Oh I don't know...

AG: May8e her fucking horns?

AG: ::::P

AT: oH YEAH,

AT: i, uHH, dIDN'T REALLY WANT TO,

AT: tHINK ABOUT IT, hONESTLY,

AG: Laaaaaaaameeeeeeee, toreadork,

AG: So you know what this means, right?

AT: uHH,,

AG: Don't you just 'uHH,,' me

AG: It MEANS there's a high chance that we're gonna get horns too

AG: ::::D

AT: hA, i, uHH, sURE HOPE i DON'T GET,

AT: aNYTHING TOO BIG,

AT: :)

AG: True that

AG: 8ut there's nothing we can do a8out it

AG: We're in f8's hands now

AG: So she'd 8etter not 8e a huge 8itch a8out this

AT: bLUH BLUH, hA,,

AG: 8esides, I wouldn't worry a8out that hotrod

AG: You don't seem to do 8ig!

AG: ;;;;D

AT: :/

AG: I mean, if your shoe size is anything to go 8y, I feel sorry for any future girlfriends you may have

AG: Hahahaha MAY have

AT: wHAT?

AG: Or let's 8e modern here, any 8oyfriends, cause that Aussie guy seemed pretty interested in you

AT: wHAT, sERIOUSLY,,,

AG: I think you're missing the point here

Had there been a desk, Vriska would have hit her head on it in frustration, but as there was not she had to settle on smacking herself in the face with her palm. Who even was that dense? Other than Tavros, obviously. Sensing the irritation bubbling up inside her, the mental island she was on began to grow sunnier and warm, with the calming scents of incense and freshly cut grass being released into the air. And it worked. After a couple of deep calming breaths, Vriska was ready to get back to the conversation.

AG: I was making a ja8 at the size of your...

AG: You know what, never mind. And no, the Aussie doesn't like you as far as I know, I was making it up

AT: tHAT'S, uHH, a RELIEF,

AG: Why?

AG: Lemme guess, you don't play in that ball court?

AT: uHH, iF YOU'RE TRYING TO GET AT,

AT: tHAT i'M NOT GAY, tHEN YEAH,

At this a strange feeling of relief passed through Vriska, although it was so small that she did not consciously pick it up.

AT: i MEAN, i'M SURE HE'S A NICE GUY,

AT: bUT, uHH, yEAH, i DON'T PLAY IN THAT COURT,

AG: Even YOU could do 8etter than a stoner ;;;;)

AT: tHANKS, i THINK,

AG: Hey

AT: wHAT,

AG: Can you sleep?

AT: wELL, uHH, nOT REALLY,

AT: sINCE i'M SPEAKING TO YOU, aT THE MOMENT,

AG: ...

AG: Why do I even 8other?

AT: nO, i CAN'T,

AT: i, uHH, hAVE DIFFICULTIES GETTING, tO SLEEP,

AG: I noticed that while we were in the village

AT: yOU, uHH, dON'T LIKE SMALL SPACES, HUH,

AG: I'm fine with them. What 8re yo8 talk8ng a8out?

Shit, those extra eights only snuck into her typing when she was flustered. He must have noticed... Ugh, it was so embarrassing. Vriska needed to get over her phobia and she needed to do it fast. Especially if she was going to have to sleep in this tiny, bloody pod each night for however long they would stay here.

AT: i'M NOT COMPLETELY, uHH, dENSE,

AT: yOU KNOW, sO WE CAN MOVE ON,

AT: iF YOU WANT TO, tHAT IS,

Ordinarily she would have shrunk away from someone holding out an assisting hand to her, but at that moment in time she was so desperate to move on that she willingly took this assistance. 'Ugh, why did I even bring sleep up?'

AG: 8luh, I'm staaaaaaaarving

AT: yOU HAD, uHH, fOUR SERVINGS OF DINNER,

AG: Hey! I'm a growing girl!

AG: 8esides, it's not like I 8 that much for me

AT: gOOD TO KNOW YOU, uHH,

adiosToreador was disconnected from trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

– It is now bedtime. You may no longer access the internet.

Well, she should have seen that coming really. They had been speaking for a while. Still, she would have liked to know what Tavros was about to say...

Mentally disconnecting, a small machine in the plug that was accessing her brain pushed away from her skull enough so that she awoke. Easing it out again, Vriska slotted the cord back away into its hole before shifting to lie flat on her back. In the few days that they had spent in the village, Vriska had gotten completely used to having someone sleeping next to her, and so sleeping alone was odd, to say the least. Tavros was a pretty good hot water bottle, and on the colder nights it was not unknown that Vriska would press her back against his to leech some of his warmth. She would have done the same to Sollux, but he was a light sleeper (unlike the former who slept like a log) and so when she tried it on him he decided she was an attacker and punched her in the face, leaving her a nice bruise. She did not try that again on him, needless to say.

With Vriska sat inside, the pod had warmed up pleasantly, although she still slid beneath the warm duvet, pleased to discover that there was a grid of miniature heaters within the fabric that did wonders for her period cramp.

_'Just close your eyes and don't think about the lack of space_ ,' she told herself.  _'What would Mindfang do_?'

When she finally settled to sleep, her mind was filled with nightmares of having to force her way through tiny gaps in the ground, getting stuck and slowly realizing that the air would run out and she would die. Walls and floors closed in all around her, leaving only a ceiling letting down glorious light that warmed her, and yet she knew she would never reach. The space below her slowly began to fill in with bodies, all with gormless, dead expressions on their faces as blood drained from various needle marks on their skin, their stubby nails gouging cuts and gashes into her golden skin.

Vriska awoke with a scream, terrified of being trapped and alone, and found herself imprisoned again. As before, she began to thrash and scream; trying to get out of the tiny room she had been left in.

"Let me out! Help!" she yelled, kicking at the walls and ripping the sheets in her frantic panic. She then did something she had not done in a while: she began to sob and cry out for her mother. " _Mum! Mummy! Mum, help me! Help! Mummy, god, help!_!"

With a gentle sigh the door opened and Vriska all but leapt out. Someone was waiting just outside for her and quickly pulled her into the comforting hug of a parent. She was swept onto their lap and offered a shoulder for her to hide her face on as she bawled in fear. After all, she was only fourteen, and the nightmares she got had always scared her senseless.

"Do you feel better now?" the mystery person asked softly as she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. It had been the cerulean-blooded medic, Dr Kajeor, who had cauterized her wound while she was passed out. A kind, understanding look filled his eyes as he brushed the hair from her face.

Merely nodding in response, as she was a little dazed, he continued, "We shall keep this between the two of us, okay? As I should not really be allowing mutants out of their pods, and I am certain that you should rather not disclose your claustrophobia to the rest of your team."

"Uh… sure. Okay," she replied having found her voice and quickly pulled away from the man. "But then why did you let me out in the first place if you're not supposed to? Pretty fucking redundant if you ask me."

"I have a daughter a little younger than you, and you remind me of her." he smiled. "I could not leave you in there while you were so obviously terrified."

"So you're only being nice to me because I remind you of your kid? Wow thanks." Vriska snapped, embarrassed at having been so weak around the doctor. After a quick check of the stub of her arm, incase the work he had done to stem the bleeding was disrupted with all of her movement, he left the room with a final pat on the shoulder.

It was only after he was gone that she realized they had been sitting in Tavros's wheelchair. A small grin pulled half her mouth upwards as she realized that it must have taken Tavros far longer to get into the pods that the other mutants… and then it froze. Since it took him longer to get into his pod, he may well have seen her having her first 'freak-out' about the cramped conditions of their sleeping spaces. That's probably how he knew of her claustrophobia, she decided with a frown.

Well, she would simply have to make sure he would not tell anyone, and frankly since it was Tavros as opposed to one of the other mutants, she should have little problems there. A dash of threatening with just a pinch of seduction and she would have him wound around her little finger. Besides, if that did not work then she could simply use her mind control on him. Simple.

And so it was with the feeling of relief that she slid back into the pod. She had something to use against both people who knew of her phobia, so all would be fine.

Vriska pulled the covers tightly around her body, trying to fend off the chills of the world outside the pod, and then remembering what the orange-blood revealed about the nature of the pods, hesitantly said aloud, "Change appearance of the walls to a hilltop at night."

As if by magic, the screens that made up the sides of her pod suddenly changed to create that looked like an arching sky overhead scattered with billions upon billions of stars. She quickly picked up upon the Scorpius constellation, which was pretty much the only one she knew, as her mother had shown it to her on star charts since she was very young.

The sound of crickets speaking back and forth began to fill the space and she soon lulled back into a calmer sleep.

* * *

" _Bzzzzzzz_!" With a jolt Vriska sat up, trying to find the source of the irritating noise that woke her, and was welcomed to the day with a strong clunk to her head as her forehead met the ceiling. Damn, she had forgotten that the image of a hill was fake. A soft female voice announced, "You have three minutes to get dressed before the door opens."

For the first minute she merely sat in a semi-asleep daze, trying to figure out what had just happened, then realised that she did not want Eridan Ampora to see her in only her pretty revealing hospital gown again and quickly changed underwear before pulling the boiler suit, vest and shorts back on. Thankfully, they had been returned to her sometime in the night, and washed… although the orange, blue and lime green blood stains still stuck stubbornly on the fabric like trophies.

By the time she emerged from her pod most of the other kids were stood in the small floor space of the dorm, save for Tavros who was still struggling to get his useless legs through the trouser-legs for all to see, as the door had swung open despite his undressed state.

"Wwhat's wwrong with your legs, loww-blood?" Eridan sneered at him, sniggering at the rising orange flush on the Hispanic boy's face.

The hell? Tavros was Vriska's territory! And damn it all if she would let the weird hipster mess with him, so she stood in front of the open pod with her back to Tavros and a taunting smirk on her face, blocking as much of him as possible.

"Didn't know you were into watching guys getting changed, shit-for-brains." she said.

"She has got a point, Eridan. Why  _w-ere_  you looking?" Feferi pouted, a teasing tone to her voice.

"B-but… I-I… uh…" the hipster spluttered before glaring at Vriska and turning away. She gave a triumphant flick of her hair.

"Hey, you almost done in there, hotrod?" she said. While she was going to defend him a little from Eridan, she made no such promise of being nice to him herself. "Because I'm getting veeeeeeeery bored standing here."

"Oh… uh…" From behind her she heard the sound of the boiler suit's zip being pulled up and his voice once more. "Could you maybe, uh, help me out, please?"

Rolling her eyes, Vriska turned and pulled the boy out, lifting his small frame with ease in her arms and dumping him in the wheelchair, but not before bumping into it a little due to the lack of an eye. The members of Group Ten gained understanding looks on their faces as they finally understood that Tavros was paraplegic. That explanation made a lot more sense than the whole 'I'm, uh, easily worn out' bullshit.

Red Team left as a collective unit and took the long walk to the main room, which also served as the dining room. On their journey they passed the vast central area of T.R.O.L.L, a strange square pit with balconies running around the edge. The bottom of the pit was not visible, but Vriska could have sworn that she saw a long white tentacle rising from the darkness as she passed by that morning. Tightening her grip on the handles of Tavros's wheelchair, she forced the group to go faster, ignoring the confused looks of the mutants and two lead medics as Tavros merely gripped the handles and accepted that there was little he could do.

"You gonna, uh, explain?" he asked, turning around in his seat to attempt a glimpse at her face, but he could not twist far enough and so gave up.

"What do you think, toreadumbass?" Vriska snorted. He remained silent for the rest of the journey.

When they arrived at the main room, Blue Team were already seated and ready to eat. The rest of the mutants quickly sat down, with Vriska plonking Tavros on the bench ungracefully from his wheelchair before sitting herself. Breakfast was porridge with a little sugar sprinkled on top, accompanied by a glass of milk and a banana. Unlike with dinner, there were no second, third or indeed forth helpings to be had, and Vriska was told off for being so greedy.

"I can't help the way I'm raised," she told Group Eight with a grin. "If I like the food, I get seconds. If I don't like the food, then I get a smack around the head for saying so."

"Well that explainth your pthychotic attitude: you were thmacked one too many timeth around the head." Sollux snickered, and then received his own smack around the head. He returned this gesture with a jab in her sides with his elbow. It was only Kanaya's incredibly patronising eyebrow raise that stopped them descending into a light-hearted fight.

They split off for their training sessions, and Group Eight found themselves passing the pit once more. Again, Vriska made sure that they all hurried by feigning impatience to get their training over with. The cerulean-blooded medic showed them the way, as Group Eight could not remember their way through the featureless corridors. Thankfully, the incident from the night before was not mentioned. When they arrived, the same woman that had been training them the day before was stood in the corner, giving the finishing touches to what looked like a metal teenage boy.

"Bearcat," she called while adjusting a final screw on the robot. "Pick up a sword, girl, and come over here."

Intrigued by what the woman could have, she headed towards the rack and picked up the nearest sword.

"Now, I've set it to 'novice' for the moment, because it would probably be best if you aren't dead," A mischievous twinkle lit the woman's eyes. "I'm not an appropriate opponent for you, I'm too good at this, so you will have to spar with this for the meanwhile," she said as she shook the robots shoulder. "Brobot activate."

"Brobot? What kind of an unbelievably shitty name is th-" And Vriska then found herself with a katana blade at her neck.

"I would suggest that you spend less time yabbering, and more time fighting." the woman smirked, backing off to a safe distance to watch Vriska get her ass handed to her.

The robot moved lightning fast even on novice setting, and Vriska frantically thrust her sword forwards the best she could to block the onslaught of attacks being thrown at her. The most experience she'd had with a sword stemmed from her fatal online role-play games, where she had been connected into the game by her internet mind-port. From this, she had learned a little bit of swordplay; enough to keep her from getting any major bruises anyway. But without her second arm she could not get any punches onto the robot, and her stereopsis was completely screwed, so the occasional attack hit her, although the Brobot made sure to only smack her with the side of the blade… usually.

Their strange waltz took them in circles as they alternatively attacked and defended themselves with the blades.

An idea suddenly struck her, although she would later realise just how stupid it was, and when their fight brought them closer together she brought her knee forwards and smashed him in the crotch with it. Being a robot, he was unaffected by this. Vriska, on the other hand, did not get off so lightly and severely bruised her knee and bringing her a lot of pain on top of all the wounds she had, distracting her long enough for the Brobot to hit his blade on the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. Her head hit the hard concrete floor with a sickening smack and she passed out.

**== > Wow, you seriously need to stop passing out. Wake already, Vriska**

"Urgh." With a groan, Vriska sat up in the chair she was in, and could have quite happily smacked herself in the face from frustration.

"Good morning, Ms Serket. I take it you feel better?" The odd man with the white orb on his head was back.

"What is with all this grabbing of me when I'm passed out?" she snarled, quite fed up with waking in weird places. "Can't you just call me in or something?"

"We are not here to discuss how I wish to bring in those I wish to speak to. We are here to discuss your progress, and this seemed an appropriate time," he explained. "Now then, we both saw that today while your adjustment to your loss of eye and arm has been slow, you may well be able to fight as well as you had done before."

"It's only been a day since it happened," Vriska frowned, confused at how this man was already drawing conclusions. "How the hell are you gonna know how I'm going to adjust?"

"I am an excellent judge of character, if I do say so myself. Now then, are you aware of the fact that your groups will soon be put up on a leader board on progress and performance?"

"Obviously not."

"Well, you know now," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "The higher up he leader board you are, the more privileges you will have. It was not my idea, but the head of this facility decided it would be a good way to encourage enthusiasm for violence in you."

"So I'm guessing that to get higher up it, we're gonna have to beat the shit out of the other teams?"

"In essence, yes. You will be pitted against Group Ten at the end of the year, which is in a little over a month. Between now and then your group will have to train, and the victors from this will face the victors from the Blue Team."

"What… just so this boss person knows who the best fighters among us are?"

"Yes. They wish to find this out and make use of it." the orb headed man confirmed. Vriska leaned heavily on the heel of her hand and thought. With Tavros in their group they had no chance of beating Group Ten, what with their crazy chainsaw wielding team mate.

"Are we going to be together when we fight, or will it be one on one?" she asked.

"One on one. You will each be placed in bubbles, if you like, with the weapon you chose. Your strife-specibus."

"Are you allowed to tell me who I'm up against, or will your boss not let you?" the blue-blood smirked, trying to taunt the information from the man before her.

She soon found out that there was no point, as he replied, "Yes. It is Mr Ampora. Mr Captor will be put against Ms Peixes, and Mr Nitram, against Ms Maryam."

"Oh, we are so screwed," she groaned loudly. "And does that crappy policy about 'if one dies they all die' still count?"

"Of course. This has been put into action by a small capsule containing nanobots being placed inside your body."

With a frown, she said, "When did you do that?"

"The apparatus for it was placed in the food you were given whilst on the plane," Now that he mentioned it, she did remember a gritty part in her dried apricot. "When it encountered the lining of your oesophagus, it was programmed to burrow into the wall of your heart."

Gulping, Vriska massaged the skin over her heart and tried not to panic. So far, she was doing good with this task, so long as Mr cue-ball-head did not decide to say another super creepy sentence.

"So yes, once either one of your team mates die, you will all die. Meaning that it is imperative that you do well in these training sessions. I would also recommend that you tell your team mates that knocking out the other person counts as a win. If you can spread this notion to Group Ten then you could yet have a chance."

Vriska nodded at this information, understandably dazed at how she continued to have her life tied to such a pair of goofs.

"Now then. Have you any comments on the matter?"

"Yes," The usual strength in her voice came back as she looked the man in where she assumed his eyes to be. "I need you to get Tavros's legs back."

"I do not understand… he already has legs, does he not?"

"Don't play coy, shithead," she snarled, as she realised how deep in shit she was if Tavros would never be able to walk again. Kanaya would make mincemeat of him with little more than a flick of her wrist. At least with fully functional legs he had a little bit more of a chance against her. "What do I need to do to get his legs working again?"

"Well. There is an option which my boss has been interested in."

"What is it?"

"I am not sure how well you would fare from this, personally."

"Tell me at least."

"They believe that if they remove your eye, they will be able to extract some form of use from it, as it is typical that mutants with your type of mutation will begin to show signs of vision eightfold."

"But I've only got one eye left!"

Sighing, he said, "No, I mean the damaged one. And if all goes well, then we should be able to replace it with a completely normal eye grown from stem cells. We shall then use stem cell therapy to grow new neurones for Tavros's damaged spinal chord."

"I'm guessing you'd have to clone him, then?"

"Well, it would not be a true clone, due to the differences in mitochondrial DNA… ah I'm rambling. Excuse me. But yes, it would be a clone, as they do not store samples of the stem cells found in the umbilical chord for anyone below a teal-blood." the man rambled.

"Heh, I can't imagine him being okay about that. But this is not really about him."

"Oh?"

"He's a veggie, that's why I ate his soup for him at… no wait, you weren't there," Trying to remove the attention from her failure, she flicked her hair back over her shoulder and leant forwards. "So, can you do anything for this losing my arm bullshit, while we're at it?"

"You must understand that an arm is an entirely different kettle of fish to an eye."

"Really? I never would have fucking guessed," she said with an eye-roll. "I swear that eyes have all kinds of complicated shit going on inside them. Like rod cells and cone cells and stuff."

"Very good!" He sounded impressed by her. "That is not on your syllabus for your age, surely?"

"Well, naturally, I am pretty amazing like that."

"Now then, as I was saying, the costs of an arm are much higher than for a few nerve cells and a single, normal eye. For your eye, you could get either your arm and your eye, or Tavros's nerve cells and your eye. Which will it be?"

Vriska thought deeply. Her personality would have initially cried out 'eye and arm!' for she was a selfish person. But after some more thought she decided that the way to survive longest in this hellhole would be to get him his legs back, as Tavros would then be a little less useless, and would have maybe a small chance of surviving. Hell, maybe she could even teach him something about fighting!

"I'll swap my eye for a new one, and for Tavros's nerve cells."

"I was hoping you would say that. There is hope for you yet," His tone indicated that he was smiling at this, and so she shot him a one-fingered salute. "All that I ask for-"

"Other than my eye." she interrupted.

He sighed, "Yes, other than that, is that you get us a tissue sample."

"Huh? How am I going to do that? I think he'd notice if I plucked one of his hairs or something similarly lame."

"No. We will need a living tissue sample. Please excuse me for a second," He then pressed a button on a desk and asked for some equipment of some sort. "Now then, what we shall do is this. When we are certain that he has fallen asleep, we will wake you, and both of your pod's doors will open. You will acquire the necessary sample, and I shall call you in here, where you will deliver it to me."

"Wouldn't it be way easier if you just called him here to get it?"

"Where is the fun in that?" he chuckled. "No, quite beside from that matter, is that this has been your idea, and so it will be you collecting the necessary puzzle pieces for this to take place."

The door swung open behind her, and a man in a button up white coat walked in, handed two test tubes to Mr cue-ball-head, and then left. The orb-headed man then unscrewed one of the tubes and pulled a cotton bud out of it.

"Wipe this swab around the inside of your cheek, and then hand it to me."

"This is like year seven science all over again." Vriska grumbled, but did what he said nonetheless, handing him the cotton bud. He proceeded to place it back inside the test tube.

"If you could do just that with Mr Nitram, then we should have both of your parts ready before the middle of December."

He slipped the test tube into her palm, closing her fingers over it.

"And if he wakes up while I'm shoving some random bit of cotton into his mouth?"

With a smile to his tone, he said, "I'm sure you of all people will be able to bluff your way out such an event, Ms Serket."


	3. All of the shenanigans

**== > Let us hear Vriska's shenanigans**

You are now Vriska Serket on the night of said shenanigans

At about two in the morning, a buzzing filled Vriska's pod – the reminder for her to wake up now that Tavros had fallen asleep. But she had not gotten a wink of sleep that night, too… well not _worried_ , per se, but a little anxious at how she was going to get the cheek cells without him waking up. But then he did say that he slept like a log…

Reaching behind her, she opened the small door to the compartment that held her dice and the test-tube and collected the glass vial in her palm. As she moved it, the cotton-bud within made a dull thonk as it hit the glass, and for a second she wondered it anyone had heard it, then remembered that their pods were all soundproofed.

Sure enough, as Mr Orb-Head promised, the door to her sleeping pod swung open, and slowly, slowly she eased her way out into the small floor space before her. Above, the door to Tavros's pod also lay open, and she could hear his gentle snores from where she was stood.

' _Best to just rip the plaster off, Vriska_ ,' she told herself before planting her feet firmly on the bottom rung of the ladder to Tavros's pod. ' _Ha, man this must have taken him ages_!'

Vriska tugged the back of her hospital gown down for the final time. She had been using it as a replacement nightie of sorts.

With an ungraceful 'oof!' Vriska slid into Tavros's pod, lying alongside the boy. At first, she wriggled about uncomfortably before realising that she was lying on Tinkerbull, and chucked the toy behind Tavros's back. Okay, so all she had to do was unscrew the test-tube. Check. Then pull out the swab. Check. And now to get a tissue sample…

Man oh man, she was quite literally lying face to face with him. This was as embarrassing as it was awkward, and even Vriska could not prevent a blue tinted blush rising to her face. This was very, very close. And there was very little space in there to begin with…

' _Get a grip_!'

Yes. It would not do to be getting flustered about something as insubstantial as being next to Tavros.

Just in case he awoke, she ordered the pod to make it look like they were in a vast castle made of cold, grey bricks. Spiders webs hung without abandon from all walls and the area reeked strongly of 'deserted'. A few cool currents of air even found their way into the simulation. Perfect. It would make the deception all the more believable.

"Return to normal after two hours." instructed Vriska, realising that if he awoke with the simulation still on, it would look suspicious to say the least.

' _No time like the present_.'

Sliding her fingers along his face, she stopped when her one hand cradled his jaw and slowly eased his mouth open a crack, just enough to sneak the cotton bud in. After a good swab, she began to pull the stick back out from his mouth… and then she noticed something. The snoring had stopped.

Vriska moved her gaze up his face and was met with a very sleepy, very confused Tavros.

"Uh…" His voice was low from having just woken, yet it still sent shivers of worry through her… but wait. She was Vriska Serket! Master of deception and trickery! Hell if she was going to lose this game to Tavros. He would not find out about the new nerve cells until after it was done, and that was the only way it would go.

She quickly popped the swab back into the test-tube, and tucked this under the elastic of her underpants. Tavros began to sit up in confusion, but before he could hit his head on the low ceiling, her words stopped him in his tracks.

With the sweetest, most unlike Vriska voice she could muster, she whispered, "Oh my!"

"Huh?"

"It appears Pupa Pan himself has come here while I was asleep! How exciting!" Well, she may as well have some fun while she was at it, she decided while cupping one side of his elfin features between her fingers, murmuring "And he is more dreamy and heroic than I ever imagined."

"Why are you, uhh in my pod, Vriska?" Tavros asked, a strong orange flush on his cheeks at her proximity.

"Pupa!" she chortled. "You truly are a silly goose! You have come here to speak to me. Honestly, what other reason would there be you stupid sack of shit?"

Oops, that was too aggressive, too much like normal Vriska. Well she would simply have to try harder.

"Well…"

"Don't you remember? We were going to play and dance and frolic! Your wits will surely join us in our gaiety!" Vriska assured him with a eerie looking grin. Damn, she had been going for innocent.

Tavros still did not look as if he was buying the whole 'this is a dream' rubbish. Hmm. He was smarter than he looked, and he was getting more awake by the second.

"Oh no, it appears Pupa has lost the use of his legs. There will be no frolicking in his young man's future," she sighed, her fingers teasing along the back of his legs… not that he could feel that, but he still looked pretty terrified at the thought of Vriska Serket trying to seduce him. Her face then took on a sly, alluring look as she followed the course of action that she had once seen in a fairly odd comic adaptation of Pupa Pan. "Unless…"

Vriska Serket knew Tavros Nitram before the whole T.R.O.L.L shenanigans via Fatal Online Role Play (so named because the nature of wounds given to the online avatars occasionally put interactive internet users into an irreversible coma, which did not stop anyone). The fact was that he was on the main opposing team to her Team Scourge of Vriska and Terezi, and so she knew full well that he had a love for the story of Pupa Pan, mainly due to his avatar wearing the stupid green get up of the main hero.

If she played this situation along the lines of the story, then perhaps he would think he was dreaming.

"Everyone knows that just a pinch of special stardust along with a happy thought will allow any boy to get up and walk again," She drew her face closer to his as she reached into an imaginary pocket… hopefully Tavros would not notice this particular bluff. "Young Pupa flies though the window of a fairy girl's pod, falls on the floor, and has trouble getting up like an enormous pansy. The fairy girl then helps him to walk again, and in return, he teaches her to fly. They fly out of her window together, and have magical adventures for many years thereafter.

'Don't you want to have magical adventures with me?" A taunting pout sat upon her face as she looked across at him then threw the 'contents' of her 'pocket' at his face. He simply lay there, unsure what to do with this weird girl lying way too close next to him and assailing him with made-up stardust. "But alas, you have remained as pathetic and useless as ever. The stardust did nothing!"

"Uhh, maybe because it's jus-"

Vriska covered his mouth with her hand. " _Or_ , it could just be because you failed to have happy thoughts!"

"Uhh…"

"And so my duty is clear. I will have to  _make_  you have happy thoughts." Vriska then grabbed Tavros by the front of his vest and kissed him smack on the lips. What a waste of a perfectly good first kiss, but this had to go right and so sacrifices  _must be made_. But as it turned out, he was a pretty good kisser, not that Vriska had any comparison. In fact, she was rather enjoying herself until the poor boy had a minor freak out, moving backwards so sharply that his back bumped the projection's wall with a loud thud… although his legs did not really follow him and stayed where they were before, creating a very awkward position for him.

"V-Vriska? What, uhh, are you, well, uhh…"

"Don't get your pants in a twist, Pupa." she smirked, still holding onto his top, a part of her hoping that he would come back for more… but he did not. His expression was heavily flushed and covered with a strange mixture of a happy daze and uncertainty.

Vriska did not take rejection well, especially after the 'whole-John-fiasco' as Terezi liked to call it (he had not emailed her back after meeting on holiday). She placed her fingers on her temples and stared him in the eye, connecting their minds and making him grab her around the waist and pull her towards him. Unfortunately for Vriska, though, when he kissed her a second time she was completely unable to focus on her mind-control powers, so with a small huff she gave up.

This made him even more confused. Was she actually  _wanting_  him to kiss her after all the teasing he had endured from her?

"S-sorry, I, uh, don't really know, uhh, what's going on right now."

"Just shoosh and lie on your back, Pupa," Vriska instructed, which indeed he did. She then proceeded to get into a more comfortable position, lightly curled up with her head resting on his chest. Hopefully that was suitably out of character for her so that he suspected this was not the real world. His heartbeats were endearingly speedy, and did not show any signs of slowing down… not that hers were doing much better, but Vriska was not about to admit to that. "And let me tell you about all of the adventures I had before you got here."

Shuddering internally at how close they were, for Vriska was never one for close physical contact, except when for bugging other people, she began a strange story that she made as odd and dream-like as possible. She even wove in a little from her latest dreams.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl called Vriska Serket who lived in a massive castle. Except she was no ordinary girl. She was the sole heir to Marquise Spinneret Mindfang's empire, a fearful pirate that sailed the seven skies of the Alternian nebula. And she was an alien, with freaky grey skin and a huge pair of horns," Vriska murmured, spinning the story as she went and trying her best not to snort at how outrageous it was. "After her mother died, she was raised by a huge cave spider that ate dead boys and girls, which she had to harvest. She would also have to survey her vast and magnificent kingdom with the added worry that the son of a rival pirate may try to kill her for her land. But that was never going to happen, as said son was a wimpy, needy little grub. Anyway, so she had to patrol the borders to make sure no one would steal her rightful property, on top of catching children for her adoptive mum to eat.

'So, one day while trying to capture a particularly juicy looking kid, she merely paralysed him. The friend of this boy was not too happy about that, so she summoned a plague of monsters that would simply follow her, never getting more than a couple of metres close to her. Instead they would just watch her constantly, whispering things and making her generally paranoid."

As she carried on with this strange story, the hand that had found itself fiddling with the ends of her hair stilled, and her voice grew quieter and slower as the words turned jumbled. Within a few minutes of each other, Tavros and Vriska fell asleep.

* * *

**== > Hey, so what about that mentor Group Eight had?**

We assume you mean Ms – _name censored_ – thus you are now Ms – _name censored_ – although you cannot actually  _be_  her, merely watch from afar

Tendrils of scented smoke danced and twisted around each other in the dead, still air. Rising to reach for the ceiling high above with no disturbances. Yet the display was seen by none; the recipient of the incense sitting with their eyes closed, mind deep in concentration. So deep, in fact, that she did not notice the door opening behind her until a hand reached out to tap her on the shoulder.

"Handmaid?" they said, unable to see the frown that marred her face at that name.

"Yes?"

"She wishes to speak to you about your ancestor. We are experiencing… complications, as it were, in our planned course of action."

"How so?"

Evidently this messenger had not anticipated the Handmaid having questions, for it was a while before they responded with, "I am not qualified to disclose such information, apologies."

A long, slow sigh filled the space before the woman rose to her feet. She turned quickly once up, almost hitting the messenger with her horns and despite the almost-accident, held her head up high.

"Well, we had better get going then, no?"

"Right this way, Madame Handmaid."

Many of the errand-boys of the retainment organisation had small trackers in their minds, telling them which way to go so there was only the barest chance they would get lost.

Upon entering Her room, the Handmaid was greeted with a leering woman with disturbingly pink eyes and a mass of hair that made Vriska's mane seem tame. From her skull came a strange pair of horns that could easily have brushed the ceiling if She was stood up.

"I was wondering whether your had gotten lost, my little maid." She jeered, and the Handmaid's nails dug into to her palm in an effort to prevent herself from lashing out. There were very, very few people that could wind her up to anger-fuelled violence. The woman before her was one of them.

"It would essentially be impossible, Madame Dumb Dora." the mentor replied, doing a good job of holding back the snarl to her words. Then to keep their usual custom going, told Her her age, so She knew which version of the Handmaid she was talking to. "Seventeen."

"Pish posh. Completely irrelevant. Must I remind you of the reason I brought you here?"

"No."

"Well, it is always good to know that you are not getting old. You have been around for so many years, is all." A mocking pout passed across Her face before the expression turned once more into an amused, taunting look.

"Believe it or not, I still age." the Handmaid reminded, her words as cold and carefully chipped as ice.

"Oh I know that very well. I had one of your older incarnations demand something foolish just an hour ago. She seemed in the quite the tizzy, but I could not simply give her top secret files on a certain mutation."

The spiral-horned woman's interest was grabbed. "What was she asking for?"

"I do believe that is none of your business, my little lackey. Now as to the reason you were summoned: your ancestor's progress is too slow. For someone with her abilities she should have begun the proper training for it already. So I feel that perhaps a more… head on approach is required."

"And why is it you feel the need to yabber about this to me?"

With a cruel grin, She explained, "Because now her parents have been put down,  _you_  are the closest thing she has to family."

"You slay me." the Handmaid said in perhaps the driest way possible. She was not in the mood for this woman's frankly appalling sense of humour. The handmaid needed further practice on how to get her powers under control, and if she was still skipping around (if she believed that She had said, that is) then clearly she had a little while to go.

"This girl in group… eight, was it?" She quickly rummaged in a drawer for the list, and flattened it with the palms of her hands on the smooth wood of the desk before reading. "Ah, no. Group Seven. You know of them?"

"The one with the quirky bird who's constantly narrating her actions and the big-six, right?"

"I cannot understand a word you say, as per usual. Here, a free tip. Try picking up the dialect of the time. Now then, back to our previous conversation. I know that a certain Doc Scratch is rather fond of this girl, and he is simply too powerful an ally to lose over such a trivial matter."

"And?"

"Thus, I need you to train our darling Ms Mindfang junior so that she is ready for my course of action."

"She is the same as Mindfang, correct?"

"To quote you from your more jovial days, my dear, ab-so- _lute_ -ly."

"When have I ever been jovial?"

"Your twenty-two year old self is quite fun, I must say. Now, our younger Mindfang will be unable to defeat your ancestor without the use of her powers. The powers that are somewhat lacking at this place in time."

The Handmaid stood silently, thinking through the possible course of actions in her head. This woman was clearly wanting to kill her ancestor, and she was not quite sure how she felt about that. But she had little choice. There was no where else for her to go, and she owed Her a favour.

"Fine."

"Good." Her lips stretched thin over Her teeth, baring the glinting fangs held in her mouth. "Now. I have some interfering to do. Soon I shall be receiving a very important item, and if certain things are to take place, then I need to make sure one end of this deal does not occur."

* * *

**== > Wake, Ms Serket,**

Something small and thin prodded Vriska in the side, startling her awake with a loud yelp. She turned to where it had come from, and saw a metal rod disappearing back into the side of Tavros's pod.

**\- Comfortable?**

The message made a ding as it appeared on the ceiling, not loud enough to wake anyone, but certainly enough that Vriska noticed, and so glowered at the ceiling. While she could not say that she was  _certain_  who sent it, she had a hunch that it was Dr Cue-ball-head.

Suddenly, she realised that the time was nearly half eight in the morning, and leapt up, only to smash the front of her skull on the ceiling. Still, though, the illusion of a castle had switched off, which was a plus.

" _Ow_! Fu-" she began to yell, but quickly put a cap on that before she woke Tavros. It was going to be hard enough passing this off as a dream without him waking up with her still inside. The door to his pod was still open, so she slid out through there, wondering whether there was any point in attempting to get the extra hours sleep – their wake-up alarm went off at half nine.

Shutting the door to his pod as silently as possible, she then crawled into hers and lay there, pulling the test-tube from where they tucked away and placing it in the compartment behind her once more. Vriska quickly decided that getting as much sleep as possible was a good tactic, especially when one is dealing with tricky people, for if she was to have her snark at full power, she needed to be well rested. But… now she could not get to sleep, and she had a sneaking suspicion that it was the lack of people within view. Even at home she always had her little sister sleeping in the same room, and with the sudden lack it was weird, as she had previously thought.

And god, that kiss.

' _What the actual fuck was I thinking_?' Vriska screamed mentally, then upon remembering the sound proofing, yelled, " _Idiot, idiot, IDIOT_!"

With her fists bunched into her mass of hair, she lay curled and twisted into her bedcovers, not wanting to move.

Regardless of how good her first kiss had been, there was still the fact that she was going to have to pretend it had never happened. What was she even doing? Tavros? She could at least have picked Sollux, who was probably the best looking out of Group Eight… although the orange-blood  _was_  pretty cute- no. ' _I am not going down this mental route_.'

Well, she was not about to get to sleep anytime soon, so she typed in Sollux's handle into the chat program (which she was pleased to note worked any time after eight am) and began to pester him.

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]

AG: Hey Sollux.

AG: Are you awake?

AG: 8ecause if you aren't I'll just pester you on here until the dings wake you up.

AG: Sollux.

AG: Sollux.

AG: Sollux.

AG: Okay, I didn't wanna do this, but…

AG: ofhiqjwoi

AG: ailfhoiwj

AG: awdio

AG: oiwjoqiwjd

AG: akehwqh

TA banned AG from trolling

TA: biitch

When the buzz to get people up finally sounded, it was a relief. Vriska was dressed and ready in under two minutes, resorting to finger combing her hair for what must have been at least a week. Perhaps she should get a hair brush, lest get dreadlocks.

The test tube was tucked away in one of the boiler suit's many pockets and she soon clambered out of her room, bare feet leeching the cool from the floor before her shoes and socks were pulled on.

"Hey," Sollux nodded, not looking up from his iPhone. "You look like thit."

"Thanks for replying, douchebag," Vriska grinned, then added in response to his previous comment, "Your glasses must be messing up your eyes."

"That'th kinda the point," He then properly looked at her, and after no more than a second of frowning, he stood and gave her head a good glance. "Your hornth have come through. They look ath weird ath thit ath well."

"What?" she cried, and ran her hand over the nubs on her head. Indeed, on one side of her head a tiny, fine horn of one centimetre tall and a bright yellow had emerged, and on her left, two points of the same height and colour. Weird.

"Tho, you're gonna have two hornth on one thide, and one on the other?" he snorted. "Man, that'th pretty fucking weird."

"Because you're not the captain of 'pretty fucking weird'?"

"Good morning!" Feferi chirped as she emerged from her pod. "Oh glub, you're getting horns too! This is all so exciting!"

It seemed that Feferi had forgotten her earlier qualm against Vriska in favour of the weird structures emerging from her head.

"Uhh, can someone help me out, please?" Tavros called, and Vriska elbowed Sollux, reminding him that it was his turn to get him out. He reminded her that she was the one who broke his back in the first place. Ultimately, Vriska got Tavros out.

This was a much harder task that it ordinarily was due to the loss of one of her arms. Thus, she had to rely mainly on her whole right arm, and rest him on the stump of the left as little as possible. It was tricky, but just about possible. Vriska noticed that while doing this, the boy did not make eye contact with her once, afraid to meet her gaze. Evidently he remembered what happened last night, and would probably ask her about it later no doubt.

"Am I too beautiful to look on this morning, or somethi- hey! You're getting them as well." Vriska announced as she noticed similar horns to hers, only his were made up of only one yellow point on each side. "Weird."

"When in close contact with other mutants for extended periods of time, the mutation processes speed up due to release of certain hormones. That is why we keep you separate at night." Dr Kajeor explained, listening in on the conversation as he opened the door. "Have you two been cuddling rather than training?"

"What the? No!" Vriska spluttered, and Tavros was certain that had she been typing, several eights would have snuck into her writing on account of the flustered blush rising to her cheeks. "Gross, not with this absolute moron. Yuck."

' _But kissing him smack on the lips is a completely different deal, obviously_.  _Something I go back for as well_.' her inner monologue whispered, before the other half of her snapped back, ' _Shoosh_!'

Wagglings of eyebrows and snorts of laughter ensued throughout breakfast, not to mention the call of 'Not bad!' from Terezi. They both ate their meal in near silence with a flushed glaze, until Tavros whispered, "You, uhh, didn't happen to sneak into my pod, uh, last night, somehow?"

"Don't you start as well!" Vriska grimaced. "Even if I could break out of mine, and then into yours in a night, why the hell would I  _want_  to? You're fucking useless at everything and almost got us killed the entire time we were in the village. So why would I want to ' _cuddle'_  with you?" The phrasing of his words then hit her, and with a sly grin, murmured, "Why? Having x-rated dreams about me and you,  _alone_  in your pod?"

He made a few noises, but he was so flustered that the stuttering and the err-ing took over, and so she could not understand a word of it. After a few seconds of this, he simply turned away from her mocking gaze and looked down at his food. Not a further word was said, but Vriska noted how the Australian boy on the other table, Gamzee, was looking displeased at her actions. Wow, maybe he really did have a crush on Tavros. She gave him a sugary sweet smile before continuing to eat her porridge.

After a brief announcement from the head guard, they were set off on the path to their training rooms, and Vriska wondered when and if Mr Orb-head was going to corner her. It was only when they were about to commence training that an errand-boy stopped her from entering with the rest of Group Eight, demanding that she follow him. Guessing what it was about, she did as told and was soon brought to a heavy looking door made from a dark, glossy wood. A gold rectangle of metal was nailed to this door, with the name 'Doc Scratch' engraved into it. So  _that's_  what his name was.

Knock, knock.

"Please wait a moment." the man called, and judging by the 'clink' of glass against wood, he was putting on the weird orb. Vriska decided to barge in anyway, as it could give her a chance at seeing the man's face.

A shock of abnormally pale skin was quickly covered by the white sphere, and as it was put on so quickly a small loop of glasses chain stuck out from the bottom.

"Did I not instruct you to wait?" he snapped irritably, adjusting the collar of his jacket. "Oh, never mind. Do you have the sample?"

"Obviously," Vriska said. "Didn't you see?"

"I have not got the clearance to view the cameras in the sleeping pods, even if I had wanted to."

Vriska's blood ran cold. Who  _had_  sent her that message them? "So, it wasn't you who woke me up?"

"No. It will have been my boss. They like to keep a watch on all of you, especially when someone is undertaking a task for them."

Not certain as to whether that was more or less creepy than Doc Scratch watching her, she shrugged and tried to look nonchalant while drawing the test tube from her pocket.

"Here. A swab covered with Toreadork saliva, and a couple of cheek cells. Enjoy. How's my eye coming along?"

* * *

**== > Be the one with the chainsaw**

You are now Kanaya Maryam, the one with the chainsaw

Well, as she had suspected, there was only so much that Kanaya's mentor could teach her on the subject of fighting with a chainsaw. When prompted, he decided to show her basic sword fighting moves, adapting them all little to fit the heavier and less easily wielded chainsaw. Yet these moves were quickly learnt and exhausted, so he set her exercises to improve her upper body strength, which would be needed if Kanaya was to use the chainsaw of all things as a weapon.

Okay, so she was fairly decent with a chainsaw, and it was pretty fun to use, especially when pretending to fight off hoardes of zombies. But when she thought about it… perhaps she should have taken the pistol that she had initially seen.

Casting her gaze over to where Feferi was stood, she watched as the girl hurled the trident at the moving target's chests and ripping it back from the fabric with ease, whirled around to stab another, slicing the dummy open to reveal the fluffy, white stuffing. There was a strange, almost feral grin on her face as she did this, and it was a pity that their mentor had not seen their display. It had been impressive.

Their mentor was a gunslinging man from the deep south of the United States of America. Kanaya occasionally wondered if he took pride in being a walking, talking stereotype for a Texan cowboy, but decided it would be best not to ask. The cowboy mentor's attentions were currently wholly focused on Eridan and the tutoring he was gaining for the Agar's Snozzpairs… ahem, Ahab's Crosshairs.

"C'mon, Kan! Lemme see you get up to one hundred this time!" the mentor called when he noticed the Russian stopping for a break. Kanaya seethed on the inside at his nickname, but decided to let it slip. It would not do to have the man angry at her if he was her only chance of getting any good with her awkward weapon of choice. Stupid Eridan making his nickname rub off onto their instructor. Stupid radiation making her grey… stupid jade blood removing her from her parents.

With a choice Russian curse under her breath, Kanaya resumed her press-ups.

One, two, three, four… five… six… ugh… seven…

' _Focus your mind on something else, and the task at hand will become far less noticeable_.' The words of her adoptive mother rang through Kanaya's mind, and she found herself missing her dreadfully.

Kanaya Maryam had been born to a young couple in rural Ethiopia. Honestly, no one had a clue how the jade-blooded gene found its way into a family of yellow-bloods, and her parents wished dearly that she had been born of any other colour so that they could keep her… but the fact was that they could not, and so the girl was sent off to Russia as quickly as possible. Although she was never told of her situation, Kanaya never believed that the Virgin Mother Queen she was raised by was her mum. Kanaya was black, and her 'mother' from New Zealand. But while she did not believe that they were of flesh and blood, she treated her with as much affection as she would her real mum.

Unlike most children of her age, Kanaya did not go to school and was instead taught genetics and the finer points of the modification of genes. How the radiation that still crept along the surface of the planet caused the mutations in the nucleotide base pairs of DNA, and how that changed all of the cells in the body. With what she knew now, she could quite easily be studying her first year at university.

But instead of helping humankind by blotting out these harmful mutations, she was doing press-ups. Ugh.

"Gather round." their mentor called suddenly, and relieved, Kanaya pushed herself to her feet and walked over. He passed them their lunches before instructing them to sit down in a semi-circle before him. "Since it's past midday now, I can tell you about this competition we'll be doing with you."

"Competition?" Feferi inquired.

"Please keep your mouth shut when I'm talking, Ms Princess."

The girl bristled at this, expecting Eridan to join her in the imminent huff, but he did little more than listen to their mentor with admiration. Huh? Kanaya watched the two of them from the corner of her eye, anticipating a minor domestic as soon as this group talk was over.

"You're gonna be fighting against Group Eight, and the winner of this will fight the victor from the Blue Team. Eridan, you're against Vriska, Feferi, against Sollux, and Kan, you're up against Tavros; if those names mean anything to you."

Man oh man, Eridan could not wait! This would finally be his chance to beat the shit out of Vriska without Feferi meddling with her shame and guilt-tripping.

Bugging and fussing and meddling.

Damn that Feferi, but hell if he would not listen to every word she said like an overly hopeful sap.

Something about that Vriska girl sparked hatred within him, though. He looked forward to this fight.

"Are we having to  _kill_  them?" Kanaya asked.

"Course not!" the man laughed. "What use would that be? Just knock 'em out."

"That is good to hear. Although the endorsing of violence disgusts me if I'm honest." said Kanaya, yet she doubted that taking out Tavros would be difficult from a technical point of view. What _would_  be an issue is doing it on an emotional level. He was so pathetic that even looking at him in a withering way made the offender lose class points by the bucketful. Except not bucketful, because suddenly the word has become outrageously indecent and awkward to even  _think_  about.

With a malicious grin, Eridan decided, "This is goin' to be easy."

* * *

Your name is Aradia Medigo.

You have a number of INTERESTS, namely ARCHAEOLOGY and it is a dream of yours to discover all of the ANCIENT CITADELS and LOST TEMPLES and DESECRATED RUINS. All of them.

Something you neglect to tell people is that SOMETIMES YOU HEAR VOICES. Especially recently. As in mutation recently. It's pretty damn WEIRD, but hey, that is LIFE.

Several months ago you began GOING GREY… and no, not your hair. Since your mother was the head MUTANT CONFISCATOR IN PARIS, you tried to hide, but she turned out to be OKAY WITH IT and helped you hide in your basement. But eventually you were FOUND and CONFISCATED by her colleagues, which sucked royal boondollars.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	4. Make her pay

**== > Hell, lets be Aradia**

You are now Aradia Medigo, and you are currently wondering what on earth it was you ate yesterday

Screwing her eyes shut and rubbing them furiously, Aradia looked once more at the lax boy before her. Okay, something was wrong with her eyesight, because usually when she looked at people she did not see a strange glow sitting in the crevice above where the collar-bones joined. This glow seemed to lie just below the skin, pulsing an lilac light through his veins that showed when they passed close to the surface. In conclusion, it was a hideously trippy experience.

"You okay, sis?" Gamzee asked, noticing that she seemed distressed. "You look like you just saw a motherfucking ghost."

"Je comprends pas!" she whimpered, before mentally slapping herself at the noise and straightening up. "Uhm, I mean, I don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

"Just… I think I need more sleep," Aradia sighed, holding a palm to the side of her head. "And maybe need to check what is in our food."

"Sure thing my savvy French sister." winked Gamzee before turning to catch up with the rest of his group. He was odd, but harmless enough and seemed pretty sweet. She hoped that she would not injure him to badly when it came to their fight.

Aradia copied Gamzee's catching up, and hurried to find where Equius and Nepeta had run off to with their creepy head-medic. Thankfully, Aradia had a fairly good head on her for directions, and memorised which way it was to get to their training grounds. Upon getting there she spotted her team mates, and to her horror noticed a similar navy pulse travelling through Equius's body, and a hot pink glow throughout Nepeta's veins.

What the heck even was this?

"Aradia!" Nepeta waved as she came in, the top half of her jumpsuit rolled down to her waist. This gave the Parisian a clear view of the pink glow sluggishly passing round Nepeta's circulation, and it was a view that Aradia did not need. Urgh! What was this? At Aradia's paling complexion, she added, "Wow, are you okay?"

"Je suis… I mean, I am fine. I just need some more sleep." dismissed Aradia, doing her best to ignore the faint glow coming from the girl before her.

"Purrhaps you're dehydrated?" she pondered, but Arasia shook her head. Unconvinced, but not wanting a huge argument, Nepeta said, "If you're sure."

Jogging with her eyes kept firmly forwards was a good way for Aradia to pretend the disturbing developments of late had not occurred. Her body and mind were so exhausted after the first two kilometres that she could not think about anything other than the exercise.

After the news that they would have to be fighting Group Nine, Aradia did not know what to do. The best tactic she could come up with (other than 'don't die') was to knock him out as quickly as possible. Perhaps by wrapping the end of her whip around his legs and tangling him up so badly that he fell over, smacking his face in the process and knocking himself out? That could work. His weapons were a pair of juggling clubs, which would certainly be deadly in the wrong hands. But if she could wrestle them away, she would be fine. And hell if she could imagine Gamzee of all people being violent! Ha!

From where she was jogging, she could hear Equius's grunts as he did his push ups. Last time she checked, Nepeta had been sitting on his back for a challenge, yet he barely seemed to notice the extra weight. Strange boy. Or maybe just STRONG.

"Okay, come over here, please. We need to practice our sparring skills. Aradia, you too."

Their mentor was a soft spoken blue-blood from New Orleans; the same blood class as the Scotsman. At first glance, she did not look very violent or threatening, although looks were deceiving and she managed to defeat Equius within a minute with no more than a short expanse of rope. Her tactic was to dodge his violent swings and try to get behind the boy. Once she managed this, she leapt onto his back and throttled him until he conceded defeat.

"The first thing we need to acknowledge is that the mentor for Group Nine is going to work out your weaknesses and use them against you. Equius," She turned to the Scotsman with a dour look. "Equius, while you are tremendously strong with your fighting, you lack speed and defensive skills. From what I have heard, Terezi Pyrope is exceptionally fast and good with a staff. Her friend from elementary and high school is here with her, however. You could attempt to get information from Vriska about her techniques. Although she will probably be unresponsive.

'Now, Aradia. Oh, you don't look very well, my dear. Well, you can sit the rest of the half-session off. But next session I want to see you work on your defensive moves as well as Equius, and to improve upon close-combat and weapon-less fighting. You and Equius will spar after lunch," she said. "And Nepeta, you need to work on your one-on-one combat. You tend to ambush people as a means of attacking, but in the arenas we will be using, there will be no obstacles, only floor space. And very little floor space at that. Karkat, as far as I can tell, is relatively good at fighting one-on-one, but either way his level is higher than yours. Anyway, I'll fight you for that. Any questions?"

"Nope," Nepeta replied, who rather liked their mentor and was excited at the prospect of sparring with her. "When can we get started?"

Smiling, the mentor chuckled, "Now."

Aradia sat down, drew her knees up to her chest and promptly face-planted into the recluse of her legs. The cradle of her limbs created a small zone of warmth and she sat there quite happily for a period of time, composing her thoughts. A soft thud came from her right as someone sat down beside her.

Peering through the gaps in her fringe, she was a little surprised to see Equius sitting next to her, trying his best to look casual… which was not very casual at all. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily at the smell of sweat rolling down his skin. Well, he  _had_  just been lifting weights, so Aradia guessed that it was expected that he would perspire. But he sweated almost all the time. Puberty was not being kind to him so far.

Navy danced under his skin, and Aradia was temporarily entrapped by this, before blinking a couple of times and meeting his eyes, or rather, where they will have been behind the tiny sunglasses.

"Oui?"

"I, ah, need to speak to you, Miss Medigo," To his horror, Equius found himself stumbling over his words a little. "I think we are experiencing some… difficulties with our mutations."

"Et bien, speak." snapped Aradia.

"It is probably best if we speak somewhere more… secluded. I have a feeling that the owners of this establishment will be none to pleased with this revelation."

With a nod, Aradia stood and led him to an area in the corner of the training room. Climbing equipment leapt overhead, designed to shift about to further test the mutant and a number of different hued stains coloured the ground below, suggesting that their mentor had good reason for not letting them use it yet.

"Voila, Equius. What is it?" This time, Aradia was more careful to hold back the irritation in her voice. She wanted to hear this, and pissing off Equius was not the way to go about this.

"Have you been, ah, getting any sort of, well, supernatural powers recently?"

"Uh, seriously?" ' _Yes_ ,' "Are you drunk or simply massively stupid?" ' _Oh god, what is happening to me_?' "Will you be asking me if I can, euh, see ghosts next aussi?" ' _Help me_.'

Equius was no Nepeta when it came to interpreting people's emotions, but even he could tell that her fake nonchalance was hiding something darker beneath. Her hands trembled as she pushed hair from her eyes, and she did not look at him once. Sure, he was not exactly the most attractive person about (bloody Sollux), but it certainly was not bad enough to merit being avoided by the eyes.

"You  _do_  know of what I'm speaking about." he said, assuring himself as much as her, because she evidently did, but she did not want to tell him this.

"No,  _you_  want to believe that I do," she snarled. "Evidently you have been having, euh, some sort of weird problem and are trying to push an interesting reason onto it."

"Do not speak to me like that, low-blood." Equius hissed, and grabbed her arm as she stood to leave. Yet anger made his grip wildly strong, making Aradia grimace from pain. Yet she did not acknowledge the hurt, determined to show him that he could not overpower her.

Before she yelped, the Parisian snarled, "Would you mind letting go?"

And indeed, he did, probably something to do with treating peasants fairly, bless their lowblood veins. That did nothing to sate her rage and so Aradia stalked off towards a bench, kicking it hard before she sat down. The orange that threaded through their instructor flared at the loud noise, making her jump.

Well, Aradia could not be a mature young lady all of the time.

With her mind still jumbled from the development of her powers, Aradia was ordered away from the remainder of the training session to sleep off whatever problem she had. After a gloriously long shower in the training area's bathroom, she followed the errand boy to her dormitory and was surprised to see someone already there.

Unlike the rest of the mutants, Karkat Vantas was incredibly closed off about the colour of his blood, going so far as to use a bland grey text colour in contrast to the others, who used their blood colour for it. It was of Aradia's personal suspicion that he was a maroon blood like her and wanted to pretend otherwise while he could. For the majority of the human race, no matter the blood colour one would tend to remain the same colour as another of the same race. It was strange, another quirk of the hemospectrum. By which, it was meant that many still retained the characteristic shades of pink way through to a rich brown. Human through and through.

_Weak_.

**_Pathetic_**.

**_OBEY_**.

Aradia shook her head at the intrusion. Odd, what was that? Where was she at anyway? Oh yes, blood colours in relation to Karkat.

Beside, now that the mutants had their thick, grey skin only the heaviest of blushes would show up, and she had not been around to see such moments. Yet the one time Karkat had appeared a little flushed was from the intense heat of the desert when they first arrived, and she could have sworn there was a distinct red tinge to the blush.

Sure enough a web of red stretched beneath his skin.  _Damn_  she needed to figure out what the hell this was already.

"Bonjour," she said politely, amused at how this boy was Nepeta's crush. Well… Nepeta had not told her outright, but she did not really need to say. His legs were sticking from the end of his pod and she could hear the clacking of keys from where she was stood. "Were you sent off as well?"

"What?" Karkat made an awkward shuffle to get out of his pod and ended up in a strange cross-legged position next to her.

"Hi, again," smiled Aradia. His red hue was oddly comforting, since her family had all been maroon-bloods, even if it was some sort of weird mutant ability. "I asked if you were sent off early from training."

"I can't see how that's any of your fucking business." Oh god, he was a curser. Seriously, Nepeta?

Aradia heaved an inner sigh before commenting, "I was trying to start conversation. It is what people commonly do when stuck in a room together."

"Well it's not fucking wanted here. Maybe you should try Gamzee when he gets back. He's willing to spill out his entire goddamn life story to just about any fuckass who asks." It was at this point that Aradia tuned out, and noticing this, the crabby boy grumbled some more before sliding back into his pod.

Wow, she certainly would not be trying that again anytime soon, Aradia decided as she climbed into her room, propping the door open with her foot as Karkat had done.

Against all the odds, Feferi was online, something to do with being sent back to the pod for snapping at her mentor. Aradia hadn't a clue what was happening at first, as all of a sudden a chat box appeared on her ceiling, with a keyboard whizzing out to join it and the words 'H-EY ARADIA! 8D' flashing up in bright, royal purple text. Something to do with royal blood privileges on who you could speak to.

They chatted for a while, catching up on what the other had been doing with their time, as they had not really spoken much since the meeting up before entering T.R.O.L.L.

Feferi tried in vain to steer the conversation away from the subject of Tavros's or indeed Group Eight's general well being, but she could not stop direct questions.

AA: s0 h0w is the rest 0f red team d0ing

AA: y0u all l00ked pretty w0rse f0r wear after the wh0le village thing

CC: W)(ale )(onestly I t)(ink we all did! Glub glub 8D

AA: 0kay i was trying t0 be subtle

AA: whats wr0ng with tavr0s ill admit im a little w0rried f0r him

CC: Water you talking about?

AA: the fact that hes in a wheelchair maybe

CC: U)(… it would probably be best if )(e told you )(imself…

CC: You know?

AA: i cant really claim t0 kn0w if y0u w0nt tell me

CC: Well I know t)(at somefin is wrong wit)( )(is legs, but ot)(er t)(an t)(at it would only be rumours

CC: Sorry I couldn't be more )(elp! 8C

Then continued to chat, but it had lost a certain light hearted edge to it, and both parties were relieved when the chime for dinner came.

An escort was sent for Karkat and Aradia, and from there they were led to the dining hall, walking in a forced silence… although if honest, Aradia could not care to start conversation with the grumpy boy.

After sitting down at the Blue Team's table, Aradia waited for Nepeta to come in so she could waggle her eyebrows. Turning every so often, she finally caught Nepeta as she came in, followed shortly afterwards by Equius, and the Parisian gave a slight motion of her head towards Karkat before waggling her eyebrows in a suggestive manner, one that clearly said 'hey, I know your crush is'.

Nepeta's face could have been down in the dictionary under embarrassment at that moment. She made frantic shushing gestures as her face gained an odd green hue to it, making her look more ill than flustered. But then it was Aradia's turn to find her face heat as none other than Sollux Captor walked in, and she turned back to her food quicker than you could say 'meddling kids'… and then turned back round for second helpings, getting an eyeful of Sollux before noticing Tavros being wheeled in by Vriska.

It seemed that part of the Brit still felt guilt for the accident… or perhaps she merely enjoyed the chance to gloat at the disabled boy. Hmm… the later definitely had a higher chance of being the case. With little grace and care, she hauled Tavros from the chair and put him on their bench next to Kanaya, as Sollux had chosen to sit beside Feferi that day.

' _Which I am not jealous at in any way, mon dieu. What a suggestion_!' Aradia's inner monologue rambled, even though she certainly was a little jealous. Following this admitting, she immediately felt guilty for being jealous of Feferi, who had been ridiculously kind to her despite her princess blood.

Spicy stewed vegetables with chick peas were served on a bed of couscous, and Aradia dug in with relish, finding it hard to remember to eat politely like she had been brought up to. It was hardly logical that such a terrible place would have such  _divine_  food, but hell, she was not complaining. Nor was Vriska, it seemed, who had practically vacuumed up her first portion and was now all but shovelling in her second.

"Oh my god, this food almost makes it worth it!" Nepeta beamed, only to reprimanded by her morail.

"Such words are hardly appropriate, Nepeta."

Yet to Aradia, as well as Equius's surprise, Karkat intercepted his comment. "Let her fucking live a little, creep."

"Excuse me?"

"The fuck, Toreadork?" Vriska chuckled, but Aradia barely took it in, instead focussing on the scene before her, where there were clear indications that Equius was going to 'flip his shit', as Nepeta liked to say. Equius was not her favourite person, especially at the moment, but she was not about to let him pummel Karkat in the nose and be faced with the punishment that would surely come.

"Equius," she began in a warning tone, accompanied by Nepeta's 'don't you dare!' glare. "Calm down."

"Would you stop ordering me so, gutterblood." He grumbled, but none the less unclenched his hands and refrained from hitting the crabby boy. She was getting somewhere! Or perhaps Nepeta had lectured him about being rude to people… hmm.

"Tavros?" Vriska's tone cut through the room again to where Aradia was sat, and although it initially sounded nonchalant, there was no way she was completely at ease. An edge hid in her voice that betrayed her confusion, as well as her words.

Turning to face Red Team's table, Aradia's eyes widened at the sight of the olive-blooded medic lifting Tavros into his wheelchair and then taking him away, the trails of light blue under his skin very faint. That probably was not a good thing. Vriska looked confused, mainly, at the situation, and then when her medic whispered something in her ear a slither of guilt flashed on her face for just a second.

Yellow was the colour pulsing throughout her body, and oddly enough it seemed that many other hazes of colour surrounded her, flitting around and occasionally wandering close to the girl, but never closer than two metres. The focus of these colours could equally be any of the people sitting at Red Team's table, but something told Aradia that it was the Brit. Odd.

Every person in the room, mutant and non mutant had the colour in them, and the Parisian noted that it did not adhere to their blood colour, given Nepeta's olive blood, and pink… well…  _thing_  inside her.

But back to the issue of Vriska's guilt. Did she have something to do with whatever was wrong with the orange-blood?

"Aradia, are you okay?" Terezi tilted her head a little, as if trying to get a better look at the girl over at the other end of the table, but judging by the twitching of her nostrils she was… smelling her? "You smell mad."

Caught off guard by the comment, Aradia could only say, "What?"

"I asked if you were okay." the girl repeated, a frown marring her features.

"Fuck, Terezi! You can't just go around saying you fucking smelt their emotions!"

"Because you're one to talk on human relations, Karkles." the girl said slowly, grinning in an oddly eerie fashion. From her position across the table, Aradia could clearly see the slightly upset look flicker across Nepeta's face at Terezi and Karkat's antics, which currently involved the former covering the latter's mouth with a disturbing amount of accuracy for a blind girl. "Anyway, stop distracting me, numbskull."

With the same excuse as before, she dismissed their concerns. "I'm just a little tired."

"You should try some of  _this_  motherfucking miracle, sis. Never had problems with sleep after having a fucking bowl of this." Gamzee put his arm over Aradia's shoulder, offering her the bowl of green goo.

"Uh… thanks but no thanks, Gamzee." Aradia said with a sheepish smile. "What actually is that, may I ask?"

"I already told you, sis. Fucking miracles is what it is."

"Right."

Dinner ended and they filed back to their respective pods. Settling down into the comfort of her bed, Aradia was struck by a sudden intense feeling of loneliness. Yet rather than moping around (for Aradia was not one for moping), she decided to see if she could get in contact with some of her friends from outside… although that was very unlikely.

And yet, she carried on. Asking the pod to log her onto the chat program popular at the time, she was pleased to find a chat box pop up on the ceiling, with a keyboard sliding out of the wall to sit before her. A vertical black line flickered on, off, on in the box for the name of person you wanted to talk to.

Not particularly wanting to speak to Feferi (even if she could remember her name), first, she tried the name of her best friend at school.

\- toulouseCouleur

**\- Name not recognised. Please try again.**

Okay, evidently that name was not working. She then tried the name of another one of her school friends, and another… and another, diligently until she had exhausted all names she knew.

With only a frustrated sigh, she tried a few online friends, before an idea struck her. What if the only people she could contact were those in the facility? That was highly likely, given the nature of where they were.

Well regardless she would try just a few more names. Her fatal online role-play friends would be nice to speak to, if they were indeed here. Her partner on campaigns, adiosToreador, was a lovely boy (as far as she knew) who always cheered her up without fail with his clumsy charm. He even spoke French to her, making their campaigns a little easier, which was sweet. While they had never actually seen each other, or knew the others name for that matter, they were good friends. His parents were very strict with internet safety from the sound of it, so Aradia was just thankful that he could come on at all!

And although it was pretty weird, Tavros kind of reminded her of him. Probably just his similarly awkward demeanour, she guessed. But… well, it wouldn't hurt, would it? Besides, she needed someone to take her mind off poor Tavros, whatever had happened to him.

-adiosToreador

apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling adiosToreador

The cursor hovered over the chat box, and Aradia felt a wide grin push its way onto her face.

AA: hey pupa!

**\- Message not sent. User:** adiosToreador **is unable to access the internet due to:** medical reasons **. Please try again later.**

And just like that, she was disconnected from the chat. Lousy goddamn stupid everything. A flutter hovered at the base of her stomach however. A flutter of… hope? What if adiosToreador  _was_  Tavros? And the reason she could not contact him was because of his collapse at dinner today?

What was the name of the spider girl? The clouder from Team Scourge whose persona in the game was a tall, well curved pirate lady… uh… oh yeah!

\- arachnidsGrip

apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

AA: hell0

Aradia could barely believe it! Next she would try the other member of Team Scourge, because three is a magic number and so maybe the entirety of her online role-play group would be here. Although really she should have tried the more amiable gallowsCalibrator, who did not constantly make attempts on Team Charge's lives. Oh well. Too late now.

AG: Hahahaha, no way!

AG: The rest of team charge have joined us!

AA: us?

AG: 8luh, not in a literal sense.

Same old arachnidsGrip.

AA: may i ask wh0 i am speaking t0

AA: in terms 0f th0se in the retainment 0rganisati0n

AG: Seriously? Who do you fucking think?

AA: 0_0

AA: vriska

AG: Yessssssss.

AA: glad i g0t it 0n the first try

AA: my next guess w0uld have been nepeta

AG: Hahahaha, very funny. Not.

AG: And you must 8eeeeeeee…

AG: Araaaaaaaadiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaa.

AA: c0rrect

AG: So, how is your pathetic little 8lue team doing?

AA: a l0t better than y0urs apparently

AA: s0 what happened t0 tavr0s by the way

AG: Should have seen that coming.

AG: 8luh, loosen up! What is it with you and that 8oy?

AA: well y0u did push him 0ff a cliff in FORP killing his avatar

AA: and getting him banned fr0m the internet f0r three m0nths because his parents th0ught he was being bullied 0nline

AG: ::::/

AG: Oh god, what a complete loser. I'm not even surprised.

AG: So you worked out toreadork is Tavros?

AG: This is the 8it where I clap slowly.

AG: *clap… clap… clap…*

AA: lets n0t turn this int0 a r0leplay

AA: what happened t0 him

AG: Yaaaaaaaawn, 8oring.

AG: 8ut I guess I could tell you.

AG: As far as I know, it's something to do with how quickly he mut8ed.

AG: His anti8odies or whatever are freaking out 8ig time 8lah 8lah his 8ody can't take it 8lah 8lah.

AG: So 8asically he collapsed.

AA: well fuck

AG: I know!

AG: How is my group gonna have a shot at 8eating those royal 8loods now?

AG: ::::(

AA: what

AA: seri0usly thats what y0ure m0st w0rried ab0ut

AG: Okay.

AG: So may8e I feel sliiiiiiiightly 8ad.

AA: what did it have t0 d0 with y0u

AG: Well frankly that's none of y8ur fuck8ng 8usiness.

AA: flustered are we?

AA: y0u kn0w… i heard that mutati0n rates speed up really quickly

AA: if tw0 mutants stay in cl0se c0ntact for l0ng peri0ds 0f time

AA: 0_0

AA: i wish i c0uld make that l00k suggestive

AA: 0u0

AA: n0 that l00ks stupid

AA: 0h well

AG: What are you imply8ng?

AA: what d0 y0u think im implying

AG: That's the oldest trick in the 8ook.

AG: 8ut for now, lets say… may8e that did happen, whatever you'r8 suggesting,

AG: Which it didn't.

AG: And so I kinda made him collapse and go into a coma,

AG: Lets just say for now.

AG: What would you 8e like?

Aradia snarled at the ostentatious cerulean words before her. Clearly Vriska had played a part in what had happened to Tavros. Now, she hadn't a clue how she could have done a thing, Vriska had probably just forced herself on the poor boy, somehow. Creep.

Inside, Aradia felt a strong seething rage at the other girl's actions, and from this her powers began to manifest further. Unwittingly, the Parisian was summoning something.

AA: well y0u're clearly n0t sh0wing any rem0rse

AA: s0 i guess id make y0u feel rem0rse

AG: Oh?

AG: And how would you do that?

And then, it went silent from Vriska's end for quite a while. Around ten minutes later, just as Aradia was going to log off and go to bed.

AG: Nice trick! W8th the ghosts and all. Man, you got me pr8tty good.

AA: s0rry?

AG: Hahahaha, very funny.

AG: I'm a fucking pile of laughs on th8 floor r8ght now.

AA: 0_0

AA: i seri0usly have n0 idea what y0ure talking ab0ut

AG: I'm terrified! There! Is that what y8u wanted to he8r you sick fuck?

AG: N8w mak8 them go the f8ck away!

AA: im s0rry but i d0nt kn0w what y0u mean

AA: b0nne nuit

* * *

**== > Be the spider bitch**

\- We apologise for the inconvenience, but Vriska is currently in the wrong frame of mind for you to be her.

**== > Be the spider bitch the next morning**

You are now Vriska Serket, the morning after your conversation with Aradia

Getting dressed was a horrid affair. It was bad enough trying to pull overalls on when you were in a very small space and had only  _one_  arm, but the added voices surrounding her were somewhat of a huge put-off.

Honestly, she could not say that she was completely certain as to what was going on, but as far as she could tell, the ghosts of all she had helped to kill were haunting her. But she could never actually  _see_  them, no. Apparently that was too good for her. Instead, they would skim at the corners of her vision, faces hovering on the periphery of her one working eye.

It had to be Aradia! Because who else had the motive? It had started as soon as she had told the girl that she may be involved in Tavros's lapse of consciousness. The corners of her eyes began blur, and over a few seconds that blur because faces, slightly transparent but there nonetheless. Understandably, she freaked out for a good ten minutes, screaming and trying to get out of the room in a similar manner to her claustrophobia episode.

She had gotten no sleep. Too scared of the whisperings and the ghosts and what they would do if she dropped off for even a second.

"Looking a little chubby today," one commented in a husky whisper as she clambered out of the pod. "You'd think that exercise would help, but wow. Your fat is resistant to all."

"Oh but look, though. It's clear it's going to make her super curvy. Just how I like 'em." another purred, and Vriska could have sworn she could feel a cold hand flush against the skin at the small of her back. "Just wait until she matures a little more."

A tear formed at the corner of her eye, stemming from the frightened and disturbed feelings in her body. This was soon disposed of and Vriska slid into her ego, the slouch in her shoulders ironed out as her spine straightened up. A sneer sat comfortably on her face and showed no signs of leaving.

When Vriska sighted Aradia from across the room, she shot her middle finger up at her, earning a very confused look.

Was that bitch still pretending she had not done this to her? Ah that was more like it. Aradia's complexion turned a very odd shade as she spotted the near solid forms that surrounded Vriska. Rather than the blobs they were before, these forms were… well, horrific.

The colours they were made up of seemed to flow down the major veins, creating creatures that seemed to be made of blood vessels, save for the glow where the neck would ordinarily be.

What. Had. She. Done.

"You look like thit today ath well." Sollux commented to Vriska, giving her horns a poke in the process that sent an odd shiver through her body. She quickly pushed him away.

"You know, is there ever going to be a day, now, when you don't comment on how shit I look?"

With a wide grin, Eridan added, "You really do, though, Wriska."

" _Vriska_ , fishy. Like Vri… uh… shit I can't think of a word."

"Veruca?" one of her ghosts offered, which no one else seemed to notice, thankfully.

The next few days were hideously dull without Tavros to bully… ahem, tease. She even got bored of the ghosts, as it seemed all they could do was insult her from afar, and since the one incident where she had thought one touched her, none of the others had come closer than two metres to her. She had merely imagined the ghostly hand on her back. All they did was bitch, and Vriska had a fairly thick skin to that. Sleep did not come easily, however, and so she pestered Aradia every night to make them go away, with little luck. The Parisian did not know where they had come from, but she was firm in her decision that they would make her show remorse at what she had done to Tavros.

Kanaya had begun to speak to her, and she found the classy girl's company nice, if not a tad overly-mothering at times. And by at times, she meant always. She tended to look fairly flustered a lot, though, which was weird.

Brobot was as impossible to beat as ever, and so it was with relief when Vriska was pulled out of training by her medic, informing her that she needed to make her way to the operating theatre.

* * *

**== > Tavros, wake already**

You are now Tavros Nitram, about to enter the surgical theatre-

**== > Okay, maybe don't wake now, wait until after the operation, whoa**

White light filled his vision before a blurry image of his surroundings began to form. To his right, the doctor that had been assigned to him, and to his left stood Vriska, her sadistic smile still plastered on her face and a bandage covering her damaged eye. The room was of a light teal and a variety of machines stood on standby around him.

"Hey, Pupa," she smirked. "About time you woke up."

"Huh?"

"And guess what?" Vriska continued, ignoring his almost-question. "I got you a little gift."

She then proceeded to sit down on the corner of his hospital bed and snake her fingers below the covers, the tips lightly brushing across the skin of his shin, disrupting the fine hair there and making a heavy flush appear across his features. After what may or may not have happened  _that night_ , he wasn't sure how comfortable he was with such actions.

"Uh, could you… wait w-what?" Tavros flung the covers to the sides, and ignoring the black in the corners of his vision (lousy goddamn stupid head rush) gave the skin of his thigh a good pinch, making him yelp. He tried again with a slightly more gentle pinch to his calf, and again, the same result. He could feel… he could feel his legs again. Continuing the prodding, he was a little surprised at the sharp twist to the skin of his leg Vriska gave.

"Ow!"

"Oh, I thought it was a sort of 'lets all pinch Pupa's legs' game." she snickered.

"Wait… what did you just call me?"

"Pupa, lameass. How did you think I got the tissue sample for your new stem cells?"

. The orange on his face deepened in shade as he realised just what she had done. Her face had also taken on a slightly blue tint, although she was keeping her embarrassment under better control than he was, and even had the gusto to smirk in a seductive manner at him. It was a pretty hard thing to pull off when one of your eyes is bandaged up and one is in a hospital gown, but Vriska just about managed it.

"How did I get here?" he finally asked, realising he had collapsed in the dining room, and woken in a hospital bed.

"You passed out due to how fast your mutation developed, thanks to Ms Serket here." his medic explained. "The close proximity allowed you to both to get to a more advanced state than the rest, and the speed of this confused your body cells. You've been passed out here for almost a week now while your body recovers. In fact, you woke for a brief amount of time two days ago, which is when we decided to implant your stem cells."

"Surely that's a really stupid idea since he's already recovering from his mutation shit." Vriska commented and was met with the stony silence that said 'I'm a doctor, and you're not, mutant.' "Well, either way, this is convenient since we need to train you up so you can fight Kanaya."

His face paled impressively, loosing the flush from his earlier thoughts as he remembered he would have to fight the chainsaw wielding girl.

"He will have to remain here for another few days, but after then you can have him." the doctor said.

"That'll have to do, I guess."

"And so will you, with your new eye. We need to monitor you." Dr Kajeor added to her horror.

"But I've got work to do!"

"Well you'll have to do it here!" he smirked in a most Vriska-like fashion, before he and the other doctor left the room, leaving only Vriska, Tavros and the mountain of awkward.

"Well fuck."


	5. Fluorite octet

"C'mon. Baby steps towards me, that's all I'm asking for," Vriska ordered from her position on the bed: cross-legged with her arms folded behind her head, leaning against the wall. "You may as well be paralyzed again."

Progress with the new legs had been slow, Tavros had been horrified to learn. As he had very quickly found out, the disuse of the muscles, if just for a couple of weeks, had big consequences now he was trying to use his legs again. The doctors had told him not to expect miracles with the speed of his recovery. He would have to take it slow and build up the muscles again, and they had given him gentle exercises to do this with. Of course they knew of the impending deadline fast approaching them, but they could do little about that.

This was too slow for Vriska.

"Do you want to be mauled by a chainsaw? Jeez, I may as well have used my eye to get me my arm back, rather than your  _still_  pointless legs," she would often complain, making it well known that Vriska Serket was the reason he had gotten the use of his legs back and no one else. "Oh, two steps! Well damn, you're practically Pupa Pan. I would be applauding at your massive achievement, but I'm kinda low on hands at the moment, since I pretty much gave up my arm for you."

Clutching at the rails of his bed, Tavros would edge his way forwards. Just one big old foot after the other. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Yeah.

"Come on! At least try!"

"I, uhh, I am." he replied, as snappy as he could make it, which was not very snappy at all. She was still pushing him to keep going, and frankly all he wanted to do was sit down for a bit. "I don't understand, why, I can't just, uhh, take a break."

Sighing like she had the world on her shoulders, Vriska shifted closer to where he was currently sitting and said, "Remember when we used to FORP together? This is exactly the same thing! You were too soft and unprepared, and so our team always beat you, and AA had to constantly come to your aid. Nothing comes easy, Tavros.

'Maybe you've just been unlucky and had everything easy so far. But that's okay, it probably wasn't your fault. Which is why you're lucky to have me here in your group to make you strong. Now you can take this help, and thank me for being such a brave, heroic pretty person. Or you can continue to fester there being useless, pathetic and a waste of air."

After Tavros's awakening post-operation, and the taunting of how he was a useless, pathetic waste-of-air, Vriska slid under the covers of her bed and quickly fell asleep. She had been looking particularly harrowed and tired, so Tavros was glad of it. Not only would it give her a chance to recover, but it allowed him to evade her cruel comments… and gave him time to think.

Tavros did not know what to make of this girl, and after a nights worth of missed sleep, he still had not come to a conclusion. Just… women, what? He was not sure if it just part of her plan that she had kissed him, or if this was part of some sort of  _massive_  mood swing. With a teenage girl, it was entirely possible. Since the  _event_ , she showed no further signs of being interested in him.

Occasionally, she make noises in her sleep. Most of it was snoring (occasionally pretty loud, he might add), with the next largest portion of the noises being strange mutterings and whimpers, complete gobbledygook really. But now and then, she would say words, and Tavros felt a little awkward hearing them.

Composed of a lot of nonsense, such as 'mmneh, got tiger first', which she seemed pretty adamant about, and 'lousy goddamn stupid spot, get off', the words Vriska spoke were pretty amusing. His favourite, however, was 'stupid hipster fish', said with a deep, serious frown. Evidently someone had done something to offend her in her dreams.

He'd had more than enough sleep recently, so he stayed awake all night, which was actually exactly as boring as it sounded. Not wanting to be creepy and watch Vriska sleep (besides, that was boring as hell other than when she said something funny), Tavros tried to walk, which did little to prevent his mind wandering.

Why? Whyyyyyyyy?

Well actually, thinking about it gave him the reason soon enough. The reason on why she had done all of  _that_. She needed to fool him into thinking her meddling was a dream, and one way to do this would be to act so out of character there was no way her actions could be reality. Ouch.

Come on. Just a few steps. Tavros needed to be prepared and ready to walk for the fight, and that was in only a few days time. God they were screwed.

The rail of the bed was a lifeline and he slowly pulled himself to his feet after another inevitable plunge to the ground. It was just like when he first became paralyzed, except without the taunts and the attempts to make him walk, for now. And unlike that time, he was not actually, uh, unable to walk, really.

Maybe he was just pathetic?

Maybe it was his own fault, because he really had no excuse not to be strolling around now he had the new nerve cells. He was disgustingly weak, and after another failure at walking he simply stayed in the crumpled pile on the floor, orange tinted saltwater sliding down his face to pool in puddles below him. And if he looked up, he would have noticed a liquid of contrasting colour slowly edging down the face of his room mate as her ghosts haunted her.

All in all, it was almost as if they were inside a saltwater room.

But terrible references aside, he soon picked himself back up and tried again. The last thing he needed was more taunting from Vriska.

The next morning, both mutants were amused to find that Tavros had fallen asleep curled up on the floor, and after a quick scrubbing of the face to remove any evidence of tears, they both slid into their daily routine of taunting and being taunted.

After their delivered breakfasts, Vriska noticed that the skin surrounding Tavros's horns seemed sore and weepy.

"We've got to have you in top-condition if we're to win," she reminded, pressing the button provided to alert the medics of a problem. Her one visible eye glinted as she prodded at it, making a gagging noise at the texture. "This is like when my sister first got her ears pierced, and they got infected because the girl who did it was shit."

"Uh, what?" He still did not dare to look her in the eye, except when she wasn't looking at him first.

"This pus and generally gross colour. It's a sign of infection," Vriska said, extra-slowly this time round as if talking to an incredibly dumb person. "It's not gonna kill you or anything… well probably not. You low bloods have a weaker immune system, right?"

"Yes?" The nurse peeked their head around the door. "You called?"

"Yeah, his horn things look infected." Vriska replied, moving to sit on her bed as opposed to Tavros's.

Pulling on a pair of medical gloves, the nurse shifted the hair from in front of the horn-nubs and carefully inspected the area, being careful not to touch the horns themselves. After a few seconds of this, the nurse stood once more and announced, "Come, we will go to the first aid room and get this sorted. Infection in such areas is fairly common amongst you."

As the nurse worked, he remarked upon the type of horn he would possibly get.

"With horn-nubs this far out to the side of your head, the trend tends to be large, branching horns." he said, talking loudly over the buzz as the orange-blood watched the hair tumble from his head in horror.

When he returned, Tavros shuffled in with a hunched over and shy demeanour, clearly trying to hide himself. Well, it was not working.

"Oh god, Toreadork! Your  _hair_!" Vriska snickered before it evolved into full on laughter.

To better access the area of infection, the medic had shaved away the hair around his horns, leaving only a thick, quiff-like strip of hair running down the centre of his head. Actually it did not look too bad, but rather it was simply different to what they had known before. The usual problems with just getting a radical haircut.

These next few days were spent with Tavros learning how to walk again, and Vriska getting used to the new eye. Despite it being grown from her own stem-cells, it still felt… off. There was something slightly wrong with it, and this was because her mind was telling her 'hey, this isn't your eye, why is it there?' Well enough of that, she had work to do.

On the third night it was Vriska's turn to lie awake, listening to Tavros's rather more quiet snoring. Unlike her, he did very little in his sleep making it incredibly dull… other than the ghosts.

"Is he going to be your next victim?" a quiet voice asked half way through the night. It was one of the less vocal faces, hovering in the corner of her eye with greenish glow to her features.

"No," Vriska muttered. She very rarely spoke back to the ghosts, but she felt it appropriate to do it that time. "I don't need to do that anymore."

There was a slight pause, before the voice replied. "Good." It then settled back into silence, the other ghosts taking over the torment instead, yet their voices were slightly dimmed by the presence of another living being in the room. Almost as if they were worried he would wake up and see them.

"Who were you talking to?" another voice asked, near silent in the darkness.

"One of you bastards." she sighed, then realised the irony of calling them bastards, when she herself was one. Oops. "Who else?"

"Uhh…" Oh shit, that wasn't a ghost, that had been Tavros. None of the ghosts err-ed and uhh-ed their way around conversations.

' _Okay, it'll be fine. Just pretend you're sleep talking_ ,' Vriska decided mentally, and said, "You took my kiwi fruit."

"I'm not, uh, actually that stupid, you know," Tavros whispered. "You're awake."

"Oh really?" Vriska gave up on the pretence of being asleep and instead tried to think of ways to wriggle out of this awkward little situation.

"Well… uhh, yeah."

"Who'd have thought!" she teased.

"Seriously, who were you, uh, talking to?"

"Is that any of your business? Oh, surprise! It's not." Vriska laughed, teeth on show with her wide, spiteful grin. "You should stop sticking your nose in other people's business."

That had been the worst comeback ever. It had only served to add mystery to her speaking aloud, which would make Tavros want to find out  _who_  all the more. She knew this perfectly well, and so was not surprised in the least when he asked, "I won't make fun of you. It's, uhh, not like I'm really in the position to."

"Fine," the Brit snapped. "But only because you're so pathetic it doesn't really matter. I was just speaking to myself. It helps me to sort my thoughts and stuff."

If there was one thing Vriska Serket could do, it was lie. And really, it was what had gotten her in that position in the first place, because it was well known that a web of lies ensnared the deceiver just as much as the deceived.

"Oh. I do that too. It's, uh, not something to be too embarrassed about." Wow, he was actually trying to reassure her… honestly, she was not sure what she had done to deserve this. In fact, this entire scene was made all the more funny by how she wasn't actually speaking to herself, so his reassurances were essentially useless.

When they were finally released from the tiny hospital room, they were both relieved, to put it mildly. Immediately, Vriska got her medic to take her to the training rooms, as she was eager to catch up on all the work she had missed. While in the medical bay, they had decided (well, Vriska had anyway) that it would be best if they pretended Tavros still needed his wheelchair. And so she was currently dragging him along too on her trip to meet up with Sollux again. It wasn't as if they were going to go to the pods at midday anyway.

"About fucking time you thowed up," Sollux smirked as they entered the room. "I wath wondering where you'd gone."

"Well I can understand why you'd miss me, but Toreasnooze, less so," Vriska flicked her hair back over her shoulder as she dumped Tavros onto the floor by tilting the wheelchair forwards, a hard task with only one arm. "Right. Lets show him our new trick!"

"Whoa, Vrithka, what?" Sollux moved to help the boy on the floor, but their mentor held up a hand to stop him. And he listened.

Slowly, slowly Tavros pulled himself to his feet, and leaning heavily on Vriska, stood up.

"Well this is  _very_  swell and all that jazz, but we've got work to do." the Handmaid said, brushing some near invisible dust from her shoulder. She seemed oddly… younger? Unlike the classy, low voice of their previous sessions with her, this Handmaid had a higher pitched voice. Her frame was slightly more girlish than womanly, and she definitely wasn't the seven foot tall mutant from before, being only a little taller than Vriska currently… odd. Even her horns were smaller, looking only like the coiled horns of a ram. "Although those new legs are the bee's knees, kid. You got a chance of winning now. Maybe."

"Uh, thanks."

"Right, Sollux here has been getting much better, especially with his eye-lazers. I hope you'll both make up for lost time by putting in extra hours. If you're going to beat Group Ten, you'll have to train into the night.

'First, you, girl," It was hard to take the woman calling you 'girl' seriously when she scarcely looked a year older than you. "I took your dice. I don't think you realise what you've got here."

"What do you mean?" Vriska huffed, snatching the box back from the weird, horned girl. "They're just dice."

"I thought they were just a copy at first, but it seems they're the real McCoy. You got the dice of Marquise Mindfang there, girl."

"The what? Mindfang is just my roleplay character. She's not a real person."

"Is there nobody upstairs or did no one tell you about your ancestor? Well, I'm not going into that, but I'll tell you this: they are a very powerful weapon, and one that is notoriously difficult to wield. It requires a lot of luck for those to be used effectively."

"Well, that's convenient, because I have all of the luck," Vriska collected the dice into her hand and looked back at the Handmaid for further instruction. "You going to tell me how to use these or what?"

"I haven't a clue. She just threw them, and things happened," the trainer shrugged. "Try them on that dummy over there."

"But I've already rolled them hundreds of times and nothing's happened." But nonetheless, Vriska dropped the dice to the floor.

12

She frowned, a low result.

"It's not working."

"Hmm… two, one, one, two, three, one, one, one. So, 11111223."

"Huh?"

"You combine the numbers into an eight digit code, you don't add them, dumb Dora," the Handmaid explained, still frowning at the dice. "Try using your psychic powers on them."

Vriska gave the girl an incredulous look. "Those are dice."

"And? I think that's probably the best thing to do. I can't really see another way you could have used them before without bumping people off."

"Those are… never mind." Vriska collected the dice up again and stared at them, trying to cast her psychic powers over the winking, blue shapes. Well… that was all she could do at this time, so she threw them again.

37- no.

84573451

Order them smallest to largest, and the result was 13445578.

' _Come on, stupid dice._ Do _something_.' she mentally commanded, then all of a sudden a strange flash of light seared their vision, and the dummy before them was gone, save for a dark shadow on the mirror behind. What had just happened?

"You going to tell uth next time you try to blind everyone?"

"I like keeping you on your toes." Vriska shrugged, although she was easily as shocked as the rest, if not more since she'd been given the dice as a kid to play with and hadn't a clue of their powers.

"Good. Repeat what you did just then, and you should be set for your fight. Eridan has some sort of gun as far as I know, and it looks pretty nasty. But with the confined spaces you'll be having for your fighting bubbles, I doubt he'll be able to use it without destroying himself in the process, so you're probably in luck. Probably."

Tavros paled a little, worried about what this meant for him as well. "Why, uh, only probably?"

The Handmaid turned to face them all with a smile, and said, "Because the only thing we know for certain is that we will die."

* * *

It was the day of the fights, those to determine which of the two groups that composed the red and blue teams were the best overall.

As soon as the mutants finished their breakfast (most of which went untouched), they were taken to two sets of adjoining rooms. Red team's room was separated into two sections by a thick sheet of fogged glass, blocking all sound and severely affecting what the different groups could see of one another.

The Handmaid was waiting for Group Eight, and her appearance seemed to have changed yet again, looking closer to twenty than the fifteen or so she had been last time. Incorporating this into her looks, she was a lofty seven and a half foot now, with the vast spiralling horns of before making her even taller. Very, very odd.

"We have five minutes of prep time before the show begins," she announced as they approached her. "Behind me are the weapons you can use. Bearcat, go for the knives, make a big show of them before you use the dice. Got it?" Her eyes twinkled with amusement as she then said, "Have fun. I know you will."

Vriska was not sure how she felt about that statement.

"Tho what the fuck am I doing then?" Sollux asked, eyeing up the weapons. While he could very easily just disintegrate Feferi with his optic blasts, it wasn't something he wanted on his record, despite their mentor telling him he could rein in the energy being released. Pfft, yeah right.

"I really wish you would stop having all of these midlife crisis's about yourself. Trust me, it'll go fine." her smile was bright and wide as she tapped the front of his glasses with a long nail. To most people it may have appeared sweet, yet Vriska thought it horrifically patronising; especially how she was leaning over to speak to them with her hands on her knees. God she was tall.

"And Tavros, sweetie," their mentor handed him another jousting dagger, wrapping his fingers around the hilt to the best of her ability. "Don't get too beat up."

"Wow, that sounds promising. Pep talks for us, and then just 'don't get too beat up' for him?" Vriska snorted, aiming for an American accent to mock the Handmaid, but only getting an accent that sounded like a mix up of Italian and Welsh. Well, she tried. "Sounds like you know more than you're letting on."

"Mind your potatoes." the Handmaid replied, any humour removed from her face. Her expression had sobered up while talking to Tavros, and it seemed that it was not about to make a reappearance anytime soon. But then, it was pretty hard to take someone seriously who had just told you to 'mind your potatoes', so Vriska smirked anyway.

From where she was stood, she could just about see a green-grey blob with a dash of purple at the top of their head – Eridan. It seemed that he was picking up a long, grey object. A gun? If it was the ridiculously powerful one that the Handmaid was telling her about, then she should be fine given he'd kill himself in the process of killing her. But if it was a different one, she was screwed, to put it nicely.

Only the idiot brings a knife to a gun fight.

"Well, that's all, kiddies. You'll be… somewhat fine. Trust me."

They were ushered into strange lift-like devices, one in each, and then sealed up. Vriska then realised that she likely missed an important piece of information. Shit.

Well, they indeed were fighting in a bubble, she noted. The floor space was a circle, and had a diameter of four metres at most. From this, the glass walls bloated outwards a little before joining together again at the top. A slightly filled in sphere. Through these walls, they could see the other mutants with ease. Alongside their bubble were Feferi and Sollux's, and Kanaya and Tavros's to the right. Before theirs, Equius and Terezi. Clearly, the winner of their battle would go on to fight either Terezi or Equius. Whomever was victorious in their fight.

Eridan rose from the ground at the same rate as she did, languidly and far too slow for her liking. A wild grin sat on his face, and it brought the thought of a smiling barracuda to mind, although she too wore a smirk.

"Wwell this should be fun."

"Planning to take out all your frustrations on me?"

"Wwouldn't you like that?"

To her dismay, the gun he carried looked like a bog-standard shot-gun, so he could definitely use that on her without killing himself in the process. The dice clinked against each other from their hidden place up her sleeve and brought her some comfort. Vriska could definitely unleash some hell upon him if she wanted to.

The klaxon filled the air, and the fights began.

* * *

Your name is Nepeta Leijon.

You like to engage in FRIENDLY ROLE PLAYING, but not the DANGEROUS KIND. It's TOO DANGEROUS! But then you're two blood castes too low to get that kind of connection to the internet, so it's not THAT MUCH OF A BIG DEAL.

Your daily routine is dangerous enough as it is anyway. You prowl the wilderness for GREAT BEASTS, and stalk them and take them down with nothing but your SHARP CLAWS AND TEETH! You take them back to your house and EAT THEM, and from time to time, WEAR THEIR PELTS FOR FUN. Your family do not approve of the wearing though, but they sure appreciate the FREE FOOD.

You used to draw comics depicting EXCITING TALES FROM THE HUNT. And other goofy stories about you and your numerous pals (not to mention a fair amount of shipping, but SHOOSH no one must know!)

A while ago, you began to turn grey, and you decided it was CONTAGIOUS so you HID IN A CAVE for a week to save everyone from it. But your meddlesome morail and adoptive-brother Equius FOUND YOU and that was that. They then tried to take you both to the doctor, where you were TURNED IN. Oh well, AT LEAST YOU STILL HAVE EACH OTHER.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	6. Tyrian fog

The klaxon was the cue, and at it Eridan leapt towards her, swinging the nozzle of the gun in her direction. Yet it was blindingly clear he was not about to take her out in one shot, it would be far too dull for him.

The metal end smacked her in the side of the head, throwing her against the side of the dome hard enough to make a 'dong'. Briefly thanking the Kanaya for tying her hair back for her (she could never get it done with only one hand), she then began pulling her knife from where it was strapped to her side. Eridan's eyes widened a little at the sight of the knife, and Vriska quickly pieced together why.

When she had first seen him after the trip into the retainment organisation, he had been wearing a surgical gown, indicating that he had recently been operated upon. The scars she could see on his legs looked like vast slashes done with a particularly nasty knife, so it would be reasonable to assume he had somewhat of a fear now.

"Oh? Scared of knives are we?"

"Only a' idiot wwouldn't be."

With a grin, she darted forwards, knife point aimed at his arm, and drew a line of purple down the skin. A delicious colour that oddly pleased her mind. His other fist reached up and smashed her around the face, making her stagger back, feinting a daze before she dropped to the floor and swept his feet out from beneath him. Vriska needed to get that gun away from him, damn it.

As his face hit the ground, his grip upon the handle of the gun lessened until it was flung a couple of metres away, and she darted after it, holding it triumphantly. Spitting out some blood from where he'd bitten his lip, Eridan slowly pushed himself up from the ground, a sickeningly smug smile across his face.

"I don't see why the fuck you're looking so smug. You're the one on the ground with no weapons." Vriska snarled, disgusted at his expression. An odd feeling of rage passed through her system which ordinarily she could control fairly well, but at that moment in time all she wanted to do was wipe that smile off his face in any way possible.

"Wwhy? Because you're holdin' a shotgun, an' you've only got one hand. It kinda requires twwo, as far as I knoww," Eridan snorted. "Hey, Wriska. If you're happy an' you know it, clap your han-"

But then he did not get much further, as she launched herself at him, smacking his head with the barrel of the gun and surprising both of them in that he was not knocked out. Bloody high-bloods and their thick skulls. Heh.

* * *

**== > Doesn't look like they're getting anywhere soon, be Terezi**

You are now Terezi Pyrope

Which cruel god had decided that pitting Terezi against Equius would have been a good idea? Probably the one that wanted to spite her after she announced that she hoped to be in his group. Life could be a bitch sometimes. Still, she was doing well enough so far.

Being blind was a pain in the neck though, as she could essentially only see when she took a breath in through her nose. The rest of the time, she was relying heavily on her hearing. While it had improved a fair amount since the blinding, she still found it lacking. Although with Equius's lumbering about, Terezi was not in a position of worry about being unable to hear him.

But still… one hit, and she could likely be knocked out… with serious brain-damage. It was not a path she wanted to go down, and so she made sure to dodge the fists that rained down in her direction, dancing away with only centimetres to spare several times.

Sure, Equius was strong, but Terezi was fast.

Just as Group Seven's mentor predicted, Terezi was darting around the back of him, landing hits on his head with her cane while dodging the grasping hands.

A couple of minutes into their fight, a strange rolling fog began to fill the room, coloured a deep royal-purple. At first they both showed concern for it, but once they found that it had no effect on their mental or physical well-being, they continued the fight unimpeded.

' _Just like in my video games_ ,' she decided, and decided that she would have to rub that in her mother's face if she ever saw her again. ' _I've just got to keep on dodging around his attacks to hit him on the back of the head, and I'm sorted_.'

"Can't even beat a blind girl! Wow." she cackled, provoking a grunt of disbelief from the boy before her.

"You're blind?" He stopped his attack for just a second, and yet this was more than enough time for her to leap up onto his back, wrapping her legs securely around his waist. "Fiddlesticks."

Without warning, for that would be a stupid-ass thing to do, Terezi appeared to embrace him around the neck, as if getting a piggyback-ride, and then the grip tightened… and tightened, python-like until Equius, blue in the face, slumped to the floor. Yet not before he tried to pry her arms off, gripping her forearms tight enough to fracture the bone and leaving vivid bruises across the length of her skin.

While she lay there, she smelt the strong odour of orange against glass, and decided that it was likely she would not be the first victor from these fights, but perhaps the kindest. Justice was not to be dealt by with death here.

Keeping the hold tight, just in case he was bluffing, Terezi clung to Equius, her legs trapped beneath his bulk. But she was not going to shift and let go. That could result in her defeat.

Following another painful minute, Equius was declared down, and Terezi announced the second victor of the fights.

* * *

**== > Well that was over quickly, be Karkat**

You are now Karkat Vantas

Contrary to popular belief, Karkat was not an oblivious idiot. Okay, well maybe the idiot part, was correct, but certainly not the oblivious part, as anyone who had watched the number of romcoms he had was able to read the  _signs_. And the  _signs_  were being pretty fucking clear at this point in time. They were saying 'holy crap, boy, Nepeta is flushing redder for you than a tomato when it realises the salad has no dressing on'.

Not that he got what 'flushing red' was, but it made sense in his mind… somehow.

With a heavily conflicted expression, Nepeta stood before him, and flicking her wrists, allowed the blades hidden in her sleeve to slide out. A pretty good display, but it was obvious in her expression that she was going to find it hard to hurt him.

"Hey Karkitty." she smiled.

"What is it with girls giving me fucking awful nicknames?"

"It's purrfectly decent!" Nepeta retorted with a small yet still feral grin. "Don't you give people nicknames?"

"No. It pisses them off."

For the first part of their fight, they circled each other, trying to figure out the others fighting style, they told themselves. Yet really, it was just both of them waiting to see who would attack first. Deciding that someone had to do  _something_ , Karkat slashed forwards with a scythe, a move that was easily deflected by Nepeta and her Wolverine-lass claws.

Following this, it was Karkat attacking, trying to get the fight over and done with, with Nepeta near effortlessly defending. Neither was putting in much of an effort, honestly, until the same purple fog that had emerged in Equius and Terezi's dome began to diffuse into their air.

Suddenly, the fight was all too different. No longer concerned about the others safety, the real action began. Filled with a vast rage, Karkat slashed and diced at her skin with little care. Most missed or were blocked, such was the nature of his fury, but a good number did not, and she was soon covered with all manner of lacerations. The cat-girl's style of fighting was strange and almost feline-like as she crouched and sprang at him from all angles, claws outstretched. This was no longer about just knocking out, it appeared that they now meant to kill, as a strange blue tint took over their irises.

Odd, blue blades were thrust towards him, and it took all he had to knock them away with the scythes, for now he was the one solely defending. But she was not without fault, and made several errors, creating openings for him to slash her with his scythes.

Claws and teeth rained down upon him as the clawed-girl pounced, knocking him off his feet (they were nearly the same size, bless his bruised ego) and making him let go of the scythes. With a dull sound, they scraped across the concrete flooring to the other side of the bubble-like arena.

Now she had him weapon-less, she exploited his weakness, trying to cut his skin just  _once_  damn-it-all, but it seemed a strange sense of desperation filled the boy, and he fought with vigour to prevent even  _one_  cut forming on his grey skin, whereas she had a number of lacerations leaking olive blood, and had managed to have a chunk of hair hacked off.

With a strange, animalistic yowl, she pinned him to the ground with her knees and, after throwing her arms upwards, plunged them back down, aiming her claws at his face… but he rolled, the edge of a blade just catching the tip of his ear, and quickly reached for his weapons.

Smack!

The grump threw the handle of the sickle behind him, catching her in the head with it just before another attempted pounce. While he quickly pulled himself to his feet, the girl nursed her split lip, glaring at him with her usually huge eyes screwed  _narrow_.

She hissed at him, she actually hissed, and had they been in their right frame of minds, he would have snorted. Weird-ass cat role-players. Coughing, as the intensity of the purple fog was getting pretty ridiculous by now, he tried another attack, because she was just sitting there looking smug and tiny and  _why the hell was someone so innocent looking so infuriating_?

Swish swoosh swish!

The metal of the scythes flew towards her, once more effortlessly blocked, but it was clear that the cat-girl was getting tired. And sure enough, after the eighth hit, her arm muscles gave in, allowing him to get his blade right up against her neck, stopping her from moving given her position: backed right up the glass walls of the bubble.

And with a 'dong!' as her head hit this glass, he smacked her in the centre of her forehead with the hilt of the scythe. Hard enough to knock her out. Hard enough to end the fight, and while the purple was sucked from their bubble, Karkat slowly came back to consciousness. What had just happened?

"Karkat Vantas, third victor."

* * *

**== > I've got a bad feeling about that purple stuff. Be Kanaya**

You are now Kanaya Maryam, and were you yourself, you would have concluded that the nature of the 'purple stuff' is to cause heightened aggression

True to the conclusion that she would have made had she been in the right frame of mind, as soon as the purple gas began to be piped in, she found herself in the oddest state of anger.

Tavros had shortly revealed his party trick of still being able to walk, and  _why hadn't he told her_? Had she not shown immense patience? Had she not been kind and supportive to him, where Vriska had not? Hadn't she?

Little bastard.

Had no one told him  _not_  to piss off the girl with a bloody chainsaw? In the few seconds before the smoke polluted his mind with anger, he felt a shriek of panic at the cry of an engine, bringing power to the chainsaw and making the little teeth whir round and round, willing and ready to bite into his flesh.

Their fight was short, but very, very bloody. It seemed that the Russian had a lot of pent up rage within her, perhaps from keeping so calm in the entirety of the time she had been in T.R.O.L.L. But whatever the reason, it was all being unlocked and unpacked from where it had been carefully packed in the recessed of her heart.

Tavros was not without anger, however. What malicious siren constantly seduced a boy with touches and kisses, and then pushed him away? Who even did that? He was weak and pathetic, sure. But there was a new level of cruelty, a level which could only be reached when you messed about with someone's emotions, and Vriska Serket was sitting cosily on this level like it was nobodies business. And yet, this was not the only fuel to his rage, for he knew full well of Kanaya's crush on the Brit, and even if the siren was a cold bitch who enjoyed messing with him, damn it, she was  _his_  siren, and no bisexual jade-blood was going to take that from him.

The jousting spear in his hand seemed to spur him on, and with a smooth motion, he stabbed it forwards, catching her full on in the stomach, the metal slicing in through her skin a good inch before she leapt back, revving the chainsaw into a good steady throb.

Unlike with Nepeta and Karkat, who were so consumed by their anger that they could not speak, the Russian found words flowing to her lips.

"You're overconfident. Cocky." she spat, her accent growing thick and heavy without the conscious restraints placed on it. "You think you can beat me just because you have legs again? You forget that when you had them before, you were still useless-"

And at the word 'useless' the skin on the bridge of his nose crinkled and he hurled the lance at her, for like the previous two affected by the purple smoke, he could not talk. Unlike the previous two, however, he could not make a single noise.

The Russian's rage was icy-cold and smooth. Condensation on a glass. A sharp blue-grey. His, an animalistic fury composed of repression and instinct. Yet silent. Vivid orange.

Which was funny, really, because that was the exact colour that burst from his veins when she grazed his shoulder. The tip of the teeth just touched the surface, and his arm went limp, and his skin burnt with pain, but he did not make a sound, could not make a sound.

He seemed to give up, and his body tumbled to the ground, and she was on it in an instant.

Left foot on his chest, pinning him to the ground, because he was so weak it took little to keep him down. Right foot set behind, for balance. A good stance was needed when you were about to undertake such a task. Her fingers clenched around the handle of the chainsaw tightly, white knuckles showing up through the grey.

The teeth dug down, sawing first through the skin, then the muscle and ligaments and then met bone, but it was a good chainsaw, and so little effort was needed before it met muscle and skin once more. And then, skin, muscle, bone, muscle and skin again as the metal travelled through the other leg.

His mouth hung open, yet no sound emerged as the chainsaw passed through the first leg. A distasteful orange coated the weapon and the wielder, making her sneer at how it clashed with the grey-green of the jumpsuit. But at that second, Tavros awoke once more.

White drifted through the Hispanic boy, and it shattered the influence of the purple mist and shook him awake, only to be met with pain. And then the noise came, a strange rasping shriek that repeated over and over like a bird. The white of the pain faded into red, and he felt it differently, making the shrieks turn into a howl of disbelief.

She did no more, and watched. There was little chance that he could beat her now. What could he do? Bite her knee caps?

What remained of his legs were two stumps, severed mid-thigh with the muscles of the amputated limbs twitching in their position across the sticky orange-brown floor.

Red turned to black and Tavros collapsed, from blood-loss, from pain, from shock.

The purple that hung in the air was removed, cruelly, giving Kanaya a chance to see what she had done. ' _Ohgodohgodohgod_ …'

"Kanaya Maryam, first victor."

* * *

**== > Bounce back to spider-bitch**

You are now Vriska Serket, the spider-bitch

It had not been the cries of terror and pain that alerted her of Tavros's immense failure, but rather the splatter of orange that coated the walls of the bubble to the side. Shit. Something bad had happened to Tavros.

But she did not have time to check on him, despite how a vein of anger pulsed through her body at the idea of someone else messing with him (that was her job, bloody meddling Kanaya) so instead she vowed to get her fight over sooner. Group Eight were going to come out on top, damn it, if it was the last thing she did. Vriska was not going to let Tavros try to screw up another thing.

Besides, she was currently groping about on the floor for her glasses, which had been knocked off in a particularly violent burst of close-combat. Not that Eridan fared much better… speaking of which, he commented, "Wwoww, you hawe really shit wision."

"I'd hit you, but I can't see where you are."

"Wwhere are my glasses?"

"I think I've found them."

"Wwell shit." he cursed. They each had found the other's glasses. "Okay, let's be refined about this. You throww me mine, and I'll throww you yours. Deal?"

"Fine. On the count of three."

And then in unison, "Three, two, one."

But neither glasses were thrown.

"I guess neither of us trusts the other then." Vriska smirked, not that her opponent could see. Sliding his glasses onto her face, she squinted. His vision was indeed better than hers. Damn. Oh well, it was better than no vision at all she guessed. But this was soon rectified when she used this slightly improved vision to charge forward and grab her glasses from his grip while he was still bragging about how little she could see.

Vriska would have snapped his glasses or something to ensure victory, but she guessed that he needed  _something_  to even out the playing field. There, her good deed for the year: done.

As expected by now, the strange purple gas had since begun to filter into the room, yet Vriska found herself completely immune. Eridan, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Vriska, alarmed by this, found another reason to get the battle over with quicker.

After another couple of minutes, the tables had turned on their fight, and Eridan had gained back the shotgun, with Vriska's weapon being pulled from her grip and shoved through the belt loop at the back of Eridan's boiler suit.

His rage took the form of a deep, throbbing red. Desperation and pride fuelled him, and with a  _ck ck **bang**_ , a bullet buried itself deep into the flesh of Vriska's left leg. How cruel, given that she had already lost her left eye and arm, to now attempt to destroy her leg.

"I'm fed up a' your shit," he snarled. So he could talk, interesting. Casting the gun aside, he grabbed her by the collar and pushed her up against the wall, barracuda-like teeth on full display as he pulled his lips back in a vague approximation of a smile. "But lets talk about it ciwilised."

"Ciwilised?" Vriska snorted, resulting in the back of her head being smashed against the glass. "Oh? Is that what you call being civilised? Or is being ciwlised something different?"

"Shut it, bitch." While she was indeed silent, she chose instead to knee him in the groin area none too delicately, making him fall to the ground with a whimper.

With a strange lumbering motion, Vriska dragged herself away from him to assess the damage of the bullet wound. Well, it had not hit the bone, but she was not sure whether that was good or bad… She was the one to  _inflict_  damage, not make it better. Gosh.

Perhaps she could dig it out... and… no, no no  _no_ , nope. Okay. Bad idea. Ouch, no. She would  _not_  be going down that route agai- and then more pain as the prince grabbed her by her mane of hair.

"Didn't your parents teach you it's rude to pick people up by their fucking hair?" she spat as she was yanked to her feet. Her standing position was short lived, because the bullet embedded in her leg brought such a pain that she soon folded down into a slump once more. So this time, he made sure to grab her around the waist for support. This was going to be a decent end to the battle, he decided, and it could not be done while kneeling.

Lousy goddamn stupid Eridan.

If she could just get her knife, goddamn it! Then she could deal with him in whichever way she wanted. Ugh. How could she get it away from him? She would need to distract him somehow… aha! Well that would certainly distract him, but it was such a cheesy, overused plan. In fact, Vriska was fairly certain that it would probably not work outside fiction. But hell, it was worth a shot, and it would be good to wipe that frustrating smirk off his face. Besides, he was clearly delusional, so perhaps he wouldn't remember it.

"Didn't yours teach you not to be a' insufferable bitch?"

"Who taught you how to be so witty? Give me their name, I clearly have some touching up to do." she smirked.

"Howw can you be actin' like this noww?" His anger had brought them nose to nose as he yanked her closer to intimidate her. This did the exact opposite of the desired effect as she pulled him closer and planted a kiss right on the lips. It caught him completely by surprise, and as soon as he began his vague guess at kissing back, she pulled the knife from his belt and bit down sharply on his lower lip, her new pointed teeth easily biting the skin of his mouth.

"Fucks sake!" he spluttered, spitting out a little blood. "You bit right through my fuckin' lip!"

But his anger was short lived as she suddenly held the recently reacquired knife flush against his neck, and the reason for the kiss became all too clear. A few beads of purple began to prick up on his skin as the blade started to bite into him. "As if I'd actually like you, fish-face. I mean, with a chin like that… hell no."

Then she quickly ended it by smacking him in the head once more, leaving him no time to ponder just how bad his butt chin was. It seemed that the third time was the charm, and he slumped to the ground, shortly followed by herself, as she could not support herself without his arms wrapped around her torso, due to the injured leg.

Something she noticed as she dropped to the ground, was that an odd series of ants crawling up his collar seemed to be collapsing into his purple blood… okay, somebody had lost too much blood today.

Her head conked against the ground, making her blackout as well, just as her announcement filled the glass bubble. "Vriska Serket, fourth victor."

* * *

**== > Be the princess**

You are now Feferi Peixes, the ex-princess, really

Unfortunately for her, the odd purple gas had only worked on Sollux, and not herself. And she found herself not really wanting to attack him, since she was getting a bit of a crush on him. But times were rough, and only the fittest would survive this sort of natural selection, so obviously, she decided to fight.

Wielding her 2x3dent, she made sure to keep Sollux at bay, finding that he had become oddly mindless in his attacking since the purple stuff had infiltrated the air. In this mindless state, he was revealing something that he probably wouldn't have in another situation. Because, hell, there were fucking laser beams coming from his eyes, and Feferi had not noticed such a thing previously.

Analyzing the situation as fast as she could, she rather obviously deduced that as long as the glasses stayed on, she would be okay in the laser department. But even without that, he was still pretty adept at fighting, which he had shown her. Although Feferi herself was not without skills, and they found themselves to be fairly evenly matched… at first.

Around ten minutes in, all of the other teams but one had heard their announcements. It seemed that Gamzee and Aradia were still going for it, with Aradia flitting around the edges of the wall to dodge his clubs.

Hop!

She dodged another beam of red and blue energy, her gaze resting momentarily on the sight of Vriska and Eridan full on kissing in what was supposed to be a fight! Hang on? Feferi's mind was now distracted. And when the opponent is a mindless machine shooting at you without abandon, focus is important.

But inevitably, she found herself thinking ' _Wait, just, what is he thinking of_?' and at this trail of thought, a beam caught her square in the chest, throwing her back to meet the wall with a THUNK.

By the time she had slid to the bottom in an inelegant pile, she was unconscious, and Sollux declared the fifth winner. And so, She watched from above, displeased at how their battle had ended. There was only one battle left to be completed.

* * *

**== > Wait, how the hell is Gamzee gonna react to that stuff? Be Aradia**

You are now Aradia Megido, about to see how Gamzee is going to react to that stuff

Honestly, he was so harmless that Aradia was having a hard time defeating him. Initially, when the gas had begun to filter in he had laid down on the floor to stare at the 'motherfucking miracles' in the colours… and then… well.

To put it simply, it was not a pretty sight.

The once gentle, harmless Gamzee had transformed into a cruel, cold-blooded… creature. His first action had been to grab Aradia by the arm and snap the wrist, as if it were no more than a brittle twig. Well, judging by the scream given by said twig, it was likely to be something with more pain receptors than a branch.

This scream seemed to bring delight to his eyes, Aradia was horrified to discover. Shit. Shit shit shit. Shi- well, you get the idea.

The next few minutes were composed of the Parisian dodging his wild, vicious attacks, occasionally retaliating with little effect. Why had someone decided a pair of clubs would be a good weapon for him? What kind of idiot would even do that? For such a lanky kid, he easily smashed the clubs around, creating small nicks in the glass where he had narrowly missed her head.

"Would you stop dodging?" he said, in a strange soft tone, the kind a father would use while narrating a story to his child. It then turned loud, harsh and furious, like she was the kid that just peed on the business man's expensive suit. " _It's pissing me the motherfuck off_."

"Maybe  _I'd_  stop if  _you_  stopped trying to kill me." Aradia spat, ducking another blow. At the moment his anger was making his aim wild, but she knew it was only a matter of time before he focused the rage into an effective weapon. And when that happened, then her luck would be out. Damn, if only she'd pestered Vriska into giving her some of the luck… even if it  _was_  a load of conceited bullshit, it would have made Aradia feel a little bit better about the situation.

"Shut up.  _Shut the motherfuck up, motherfucker_."

Okay, maybe if she kept taunting him, he would remain in the 'too pissed off to think clearly' mode. Maybe? Alternatively, it could send him off into a blind rage which would destroy all in his sight: her. Only her in fact. There would be no hiding. So she said slyly, "Is that the only word in your, euh, verbal repertoire, I believe it is said?"

"You think you're so motherfuckin' cute, with your little French words.  _Well it's motherfuckin' not_."

"Takes one to know one, no?"

"I didn't get that."

"As in, you're not cute. It was not that difficult to, euh… comprendre…  _understand_! Not that difficult to understand, connard."

" _There you go again._  No one thinks it's cute, you know." The smirk on his face was cruel as he added, " _No wonder the weirdo with a motherfucked up colour scheme thinks you're motherfuckin' annoying_."

Ouch, low blow. But come on. In the middle of a fight to the death, wondering whether Sollux actually liked her or not was not really a thought that was at the front of her mind. Aradia had bigger fish to fry.

Her whip cracked in the air where his head had been just a millisecond prior. Hell, but he was  _fast_. If she could just get his weapons away from him… maybe she would be in for a chance? Keeping him in 'too pissed off to think clearly' mode was all well and good, but she then realised it would do little to end the fight.

"Et bien, voyons! Do not try to pose innocent on that front! Everyone and their aunt can see than you have a raging crush on Tavros." Well, that shut him up. "And if we are going down the, uh, destroying all hopes of them liking us back route, then I will say this now. I really doubt he likes you back. Have you even spoken to him? Ever?"

"What do you think I am? A coward?  _Of course I motherfuckin' have_. We speak pretty much every night. Well, rap."

"Well he has never once mentioned you to me. Sad, no?"

Okay, wow. There was something disturbing happening to his eyes… they seemed to be turning a strange light yellow, near white. On most people this would have appeared normal. Yet for the trolls, they were so far beyond any hope of looking like humans again, the sight of such human characteristics on them was near disturbing.

" _You shut the motherfuck up_. You don't know anything about this."

"Oh, no. I've only been a good friend to him for the past four years. Pretty much irrelevant to you who's known him, what, a month? Maybe a little more?"

Both of their breath was a little hitched due to the fighting going on while they spoke. So perhaps speaking while trying to dodge his attacks was not the best idea she had ever had, but living a bit longer was worth the stitch, right?

In another attempt to get the clubs off him, she flicked out the whip, but instead of hitting the smooth plastic, it wrapped around his arm, and he quickly grabbed it in his fingers, yanking it from her grasp. Shit.

"Looks like the tables have motherfuckin' turned, sister." God, but that grin was terrifying.

Okay okay okay. Right. No weapon, pretty breathless and inside a giant glass bubble with an insane Australian guy. There were quite a few ways this situation could be better, but at least his accent was nice… half the time.

Wait… glass bubble? His clubs had certainly chipped the walls of the dome several times, and maybe if she got him to hit these weak points again… this could work. Aradia was not sure what she would or  _could_  do once she was out, but it was a start.

"Anyway, have you heard the rumours?"

" _What_? I don't think we have time for motherfuckin' gossiping right now, sis."

"Oh, just thought you might be interested, peut-être. Since it's about Tavros."

"Go on."

Oh god, he really did like the kid. Somewhere, Aradia felt bad for taunting him like this. But it was either she won and he was knocked out (with some bruised feelings), or he won and she died. Personally, she preferred her method. Less people died. Namely her.

"Sorry?" she called, making sure to roll her r's in the back of her throat so that her accent sounded thicker.

" _I said fuckin' go on_!" he yelled, and smashed the clubs where she had been just a millisecond ago for emphasis. Which really, probably was not the best idea if he wanted information from her.

Of course, Aradia had picked this spot specially, and when his weapons met the fractured glass, the bubble shattered, falling down in small shards designed to be safe. Evidently, the head-honcho had realised that one of the punk-ass kids was likely to break them.

"Oh, I see what you were motherfuckin' doing," he said with a low chuckle, brushing shards from his shoulders as she fled into the spaces between domes, drawing confused looks from Karkat and Kanaya. Well they could keep those looks. She had no time to ponder such things. " _I see it. Very clever_."

Shit, he was somehow making his voice echo, the sound waves bounding off all of the glass and confusing her sensitive ears. He could be anywhere!

Making sure to keep her back to the glass, she edged her way through the vast and dark room containing the fighting bubbles; the only light coming from the domes, with strange long shadows being cast from their occupants.

' _Don't look into the domes._ _C'est la dernière chose dont tu as besoin_.' she told herself, for indeed it was the last thing she needed. But no sooner had she decided this, she caught a glimpse of the orange mess that had once been the floor of Tavros and Kanaya's bubbles.

His legs lay far from his body, and as for the rest of him… it was no where in sight. Evidently they had removed him instantly to see what they could do for him, but Aradia could not see why they would not try to reattach the legs. Kanaya was still in the dome, however, having to face what she had done as some form of psychological punishment. Odd, since it was T.R.O.L.L that had driven her to commit such acts in the first place.

Speaking of Kanaya, she was making some strange jabbing motion at the air behind her, and-

"Hey sister," The words were breathy and right in her ear, the air expelled from his lungs brushing over the skin of her ear. " _You're not very good at hiding, you know_."

"Gah!" He was so loud, and so close that she jumped. But it was okay, she did not fall. Mostly because he had her pinned against the walls of Kanaya's bubble. Aradia could feel the slight vibrations in the skin of the back of her head as the Russian pummelled her fist on the glass in an attempt to stop him. It did little.

"Hey, sis, do you know what they do to mutant captors that betray the organisation they work for?"

Aradia turned her head away, not wanting to hear his lies spun on the spot… in case they turned out to be true.

" _I said, do you wanna know what they do to them_?"

"Fine!"

His voice became calm, eerily gentle again as he leaned back in close and whispered in her ear, "They kill them. First they gouge their eyes out for not seeing the mutants clearly in front of them. Then they rip their mouth's out for not telling. And finally, they take out their heart, because they're no longer worthy of the blood flowing through their veins."

At these lies, Aradia tightened her grip on his body, making sure his head couldn't reach her and bit down into his neck, sawing at the skin and muscle with her teeth. He thrashed about wildly, but she was so full of rage that she found the strength, and held him back and down.

Eventually she found a blood vessel, and his blood began to leave his body. Thankfully for him, it had not been a major vessel. But enough blood emerged that he fell to the ground unconscious.

And Aradia, realising what she had just done, spat out the flesh in her mouth, and the blood, and screamed. Having not realised he was still alive, she thought herself a monster, which in some ways, she was.

And something broke inside of her. And she was never the same girl again.

"Aradia Medigo, sixth and final victor."

* * *

**== > What the hell is this purple stuff? Can we be the Handmaid to find out? Is that something we can do?**

It is something you can do, and so you are now the Handmaid, finding out what the purple stuff is

"You summoned me?" she said in her smooth tones. "Or maybe that was a Freudian slip of my mind."

"Someone's in a good mood, my," She grinned, turning her head a little so that the smile was noticed by her companion. Yet She did not her eyes off the fighting children in the bubbles far below. Something about their actions absorbed her. Weird. "Mind your horns on the ceiling. Have you seen your darling little warriors in action?"

The arena was a strange contraption, composed of a six hollow glass spheres implanted into a massive room. Almost like a circle of massive snow-globes, in which the inhabitants fought.

"Complete baloney. They're hardly warriors. Let's be honest here. One has only one arm, the other is about to lose his legs, poor kid. And the other… well maybe  _he's_  a half decent cookie."

"Oh please. We all know that you hold some sort of affection for the boy simply because he is a certain somebody's descendant." She taunted. "Speaking of which, would you like to visit him?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I barely knew him. Besides, he's not really himself these days."

"But how would you know? As you said, you barely knew him. And you can't have visited him recently."

"Not recently for you. Recently for me."

The conversation was then closed on that particular subject. The Handmaid decided that there really was something menacing about how interested She was in watching the children fighting one another. Observing her from the corner of her eyes, she noticed how she had changed over the years with some regret. Although it was inevitable really. What had been seven years for the American had been over eighty for Her. Even if those seven years had been passed jumping about a certain selection of years. Stupid time errors. At least Doc Scratch had crashed early with her. That was a good thing… kind of…

Then, at precisely the same moment, all of the mini-arenas began to fill up with a purple fog that began at ground level before gradually filtering and dispersing into the rest of their air. "What's that purple gas?"

"It is a most interesting concoction, if I do say so myself. You recall I obtained an eye from that cerulean-blooded minx down there?"

"Vaguely."

"I extracted some of her DNA, and to cut a long story short, that is an powdered form of the mind affecting powers she has. Except I cannot use it for many specific areas at the moment. It only really seems to provoke anger in certain mutants. I had it tested on a group from the previous batches."

"Interesting."

"I thought it would be… fun to alter their aggression limits, since many seem dead set on not harming a soul."

"It's the human in them, I expect."

The battles continued, with Her pulling a face when her descendant was downed by the yellow-blood. She soon ordered a medic down there to remove the girl and check for any long lasting injuries.

"It is a good thing then, I suppose, that you have been teaching him to control those beams."

When the Handmaid saw how her descendant took down her opponent, she grimaced in a similar way to that of Her. But at least she had won, even if it had not been an elegant victory.

That, in itself, was something.


	7. On retrieving arms and legs

Slice, slice, snip, "Shit." Slice, snip.

"How are you?" a voice asked from behind. Nepeta turned to see Aradia, her forearm encased in a cast.

"Could be better…" she replied, meeting the other girl's eyes briefly before looking away again.

In Nepeta and Karkat's battle, the later had hacked off a large chunk of her hair, so half of it was the fluffy elbow length it had been before, and the other half stopped at her shoulders. Ugh. But not anymore, she'd had to level it out, and she now sported a shoulder-length bob.

Having inherited bushy hair from her mother, she had never even considered having a short style. As expected, it had created a mass of curls around her face, and while it looked nice, Nepeta had really loved her long hair. It had made her feel like a lioness and… it reminded her of her mum. She had lost her parents when she was seven, so she was old enough to remember them, but had not gained any sort of inheritance or trinkets from them. Those had all been looted or destroyed.

All she had was herself, and her genes. Her hair was part of this, and the long hair that her mother had so loved when she was still around was now scattered in clumps about the floor, her claws having severed the strands.

Nepeta did not realise she was crying until Aradia commented, "Oh, are you upset?"

"What? No, I'm… I'm fine. Just, leave me alone." The tears were quickly scrubbed away, and the Arab waited until Aradia had left the room before breaking down properly.

' _What am I doing crying over hair? This is stupid_!' she mentally chided herself, but that did little to ease the tears. When she was no longer able to cry, Nepeta stood up from her previously curled up form and dried her face with her sleeve.

Quitting the bathroom, she stalked towards a dummy, unsheathing the blades from where they were hidden in her sleeves and attacked it furiously, ignoring the pain from her wounds. But… her stab wounds did not appreciate the fighting movements, and protested, with her green blood leaking through the stitches and wrappings.

"Aurgh!"

With a cry of pain she fell to the floor, clutching the worst cut, located on her side. Ugh, it was no use trying to take out her anger on the dummy. This was too painful to be of use to her.

It was strange not being able to feel her pony-tail brushing against the skin of her back. Wrong, almost. It was going to take a long time to get used to this short hair, she decided as she pulled her blue hat over her curls. At least the hat hid most of the damage.

"Nepeta," Their mentor approached the girl, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright, my dear?"

In response, Nepeta snapped, "I'm fine! Why does everyone keep on asking me?"

"Because we're not idiots. Listen, it's perfectly normal to feel conflicted over what went on in the fights-"

"It's not that I'm worried about," she realised. Sure, the hair had been a horrid thing to lose, but there was more to it and only now was she seeing the extent of her worry. "I can't remember most of the fight… I just remember kinda sparring with him, not very seriously or anything, and then… nothing. I woke up in a hospital room with cuts all ofur me and a chunk of hair missing…"

The mentor's eyes narrowed. "Strange. That does not normally happen in the fights. Although I have heard similar stories from the other mentors."

"So it wasn't just me?"

"No, Nepeta. Although be thankful that you are still yourself now. I have noticed a change in behaviour in Aradia ever since she was released from her hospital room."

"I've noticed too," frowned Nepeta. "But I'm sure it's purrfectly normal. She'll get ofur it in a few days."

From her position on the running machine at the other side of the room, Aradia listened as they concluded, "I hope so."

"Hey, I'm, uh, sorry I snapped at you just then."

"Think nothing of it. You are going through things I could not even begin to imagine," the mentor smiled. "Though having said that, I'm glad you apologised. I do not want to see any diva-like behaviour from this group."

* * *

**== > Let's be Kanaya**

Why the hell not? You are now Kanaya Maryam, attempting to enjoy your meal

The beef stroganoff was quite delightful, she concluded as she continued with her meal, despite the accusing glares and looks of horror from her fellow mutants.

Like the others affected by the tyrian fog, Kanaya could not remember a thing of what had gone on in the battles inside the glass bubbles. Well… okay, she could remember some things, but these memories were all blurred and confusing as hell. Like trying to remember a dream the following day, and only catching snippets when the right word triggers a memory.

Pretending to be aloof and ignoring everyone was getting harder and harder, though. Kanaya knew full well what she had done under the influence of whatever drug was pumping through her system… she had cut Tavros's legs clean off-

"Hey! I've got a bone to pick with you." Vriska's voice was pumped full with anger and… something else. But Kanaya dreaded to find out what that was.

Ah. She had known full well this event would come, but she could not say she was looking forward to it. She did not expect, however, to be grabbed by the front of her jumpsuit. Rude.

"Yes?" the jade-blood responded.

"Can it with your pretend 'Oh Im So Innocent Look At Me' bullshit," Unlike Vriska, Kanaya had noticed how the rest of the trolls had silenced. Great, she was starting a scene. "Which part of your brain thought 'Hey, Lets Chop Off His Legs' was a good idea to beat him? All you had to do was smack his head against the wall hard enough to pass out, and you'd be done. I mean, I'd only just gotten him the ability to walk again and you took it away."

Inserting a casually raised eyebrow at precisely the right moment, Kanaya interjected with, "Careful, Vriska. It's starting to sound like you care about him."

"First of all, that's not true. And secondly, the only reason I'm pissed off with you, is that if he dies then I die. And, yeah, I don't really want to die."

"That is comprehensible."

"Ugh, you've made me meander!"

"Listen, Vriska. I don't want to fight with you as well. I didn't plan to injure Tavros in such a way, and I cannot begin to fathom what got me so worked up," ' _Wow,_ that's _a lie_.' She could remember a little of her motivations, and part of them had the distinctive tang of jealousy to them. Understandable, really, since Vriska was showing more interest in Tavros that her. So naturally, the twisted logic created by the fog decided that such things merited having legs sawn off. "That fog affected our minds somehow and made us do things we wouldn't have ordinarily done. I'm not saying that I'm faultless, but… I hope this has not damaged any friendship that could have… uh… resulted between us…"

Vriska just stared at her with a near gob smacked expression, before a wide smirk broke across her face, making her far too attractive for her own good, in Kanaya's opinion. "I can't believe this. I come to you wanting to smack you around for sawing Tavros's legs off, and you say that you hope it won't affect our friendship? Are you having a fucking laugh?"

The Brit's howls of laughter filled the room, only quietened for a few seconds as Karkat yelled, "Hey, leave her alone!"

"Of course, Mr-oh-so-dashing-prince-to-the-rescue." Vriska smirked, and sat herself down at the opposite end of the bench to Kanaya. She was soon joined by Sollux, sitting himself opposite to the spider-bitch. Their training session had dragged on a little due to the loss of a team mate and the resulting imbalance of their group. With a grin reeking of conspiracy, Vriska slid a little closer to Kanaya, somehow oblivious to the flush beginning to rise on her face. "Well either way, you're being left behind in the ratings."

"What?" The word's meaning hit her.

"The ratings? Obviously that's what these battles are for," Vriska said, working the words around the food in her mouth. Equius, from across the room, looked horrified at the blue-blood's behaviour. "Didn't your mentor tell you? Well, anyway, nine is first, then ours, then yours, and finally, the lamiest of them all, Group Seven. Yours only got up there because you wasted no time sawing Tavros's legs off and won the battle first."

"There is a list?"

"Sure. Here," Vriska pulled a folded slip of paper from her pocket. "You came first."

"Yes, I remember that being announced."

"Hey, wathn't the Handmaid thuppothed to keep that?" Sollux inquired once he saw what she had handed Kanaya.

"Does it even matter?" Vriska snorted. "It's just a piece of paper."

Sollux shrugged, and went back to chatting with the less bouncy than usual Feferi.

Kanaya had won first, so her name was at the very top of the list, followed by Terezi, then Karkat, Vriska, Sollux and Aradia. Then the order for the losers: Gamzee, Feferi, Eridan, Nepeta, and then finally, Equius followed by Tavros.

"See, if you hadn't taken out Toreadork so early on, then my group would have been the top."

"Surely not. Even without Tavros's early defeat, your victories were ranked fourth and fifth. Group Nine's victories were second and third place, and Gamzee held Aradia off until the very end… See, they've tallied up points for it. If the less you have is the better, and seven got six points, with yours at fifteen, then realistica-"

"Yeah, I think we're done looking at the list." decided Vriska, plucking the sheet from the Russians hands, which was in turn ripped from her grip by a serene looking Handmaid.

"Thanks for swiping that from me," she said in a monotone voice, stuffing the sheet into a pocket. "So, since I'm apparently an errand dog now, I've been instructed to fetch you, Bearcat. Up."

"Ugh." Vriska made a face at the Handmaid's tall form, but stood up nonetheless. Whenever she was called out, it usually involved getting body-parts back… which was always good, considering she still lacked an arm.

* * *

**== > We haven't been Gamzee yet once. Be him**

You are now Gamzee Makara

When the Aussie finally awoke after the battle, the first thing he registered was a nurse spooning green gloop into his mouth and getting him to swallow. Man… how long had he been out for that to be necessary?

"Good evening, Mr Makara. How are you feeling?" the nurse asked, pausing the force feeding for a few seconds. "You've been out for quite some time."

"Just let me screw my motherfuckin' head back on." said Gamzee, batting the spoon away. His memories from the fight were all dancing around in his head, too fast for him to get a proper understanding of them, but now and again one would slow enough for him to get a glimpse of it and think 'what the motherfuck happened there?'

The nurse was still rambling on about something, yet he ignored it, trying to grab onto anything in his mind, just so he could remember something of the fight. Without even thinking, his hand reached up to brush the skin of his neck, and BAM, pain shot through his nerve cells like fire.

A memory came. Aradia's painfully tight grip on his torso, teeth biting and ripping at his skin. Her body stood above his, clothes tinged a deep, dark purple with his blood.

Shit. The hand at his neck repositioned itself to his temples as he attempted to remember more but… it seemed that was all he was getting right now. Well… that was more than enough, really. He did not want to relieve being savaged by that Frenchwoman.

"I see you found your injury!" How was this nurse so chipper? "As I was saying, you're lucky we got to you so fast, as we were able to lessen the bleeding almost immediately. A form of plastic has been used to replace the section of blood vessel you lost, with small amounts of grown muscle and skin. We had some of your stem-cells available to us from the bank."

"I guess that was fuckin' lucky." he agreed and swivelled his body round, just until he was able to swing his legs off the side of the bed, and then stood.

"Whoa there. I know you purple-bloods heal fast, but you really should rest for a while longer. You're still weak."

"Doesn't feel that way, bro," he said, and left the room, the nurse following behind him closely. "So I have this weird feeling that I'm supposed to up and chill with a certain motherfucker."

"Eh… sorry?" The nurse, too confused to protest, brought his tablet before him and jotted down notes about how the mutant's condition was improving drastically.

"Do you know which room Tavbro is in?"

"Who?"

"Tavros. Can't imagine there's more than fuckin' one of him."

"Ah, no, he's right here," the man announced, remembering the instructions pertaining to any of the purple-bloods. Just keep them happy and high off the spoor slime, and you were golden. The nurse then led him off to the room Tavros was in, and stopped him briefly before entering. "From what the notes are saying on here, he's not going to be in great shape at all."

With a loud groan, the door was pulled open, and a very harried looking doctor quickly slid from the room, although her look of irritation soon dispelled when she saw whom it was. "Oh, apologies. I thought it was that Serket girl back again."

"Oh?" The nurse's interest was piqued at this potential gossip, as well as Gamzee's.

"She has returned numerous times to irritate my patient, and tell us how to do our jobs, since apparently it's somehow our fault he still cannot walk."

Can't walk? But he was only in the wheelchair because he was tired… Gamzee could remember seeing Tavros standing at the start of the battle…

Pushing the door open, he was horrified to see what had become of Tavros. The orange-blood's face clearly indicated that he had been expecting someone else through the door, but Gamzee ignored that, because despite the covering of the blanket, it was clear that his legs suddenly stopped existing mid-thigh.

"Hi, Gamzee," he smiled, although there was a fairly vacant look to his eyes that screamed 'heavy use of painkillers'. "How, uh, did your fight go?"

"Shit. I mean, motherfuckin' fine. Don't worry about me," Gamzee made sure to stop looking at the stumps of where his legs had been. "What, ok, what up and happened to your fuckin' legs, bro?"

With a confused look at where his feet should have been, Tavros frowned, "Don't know…"

"Perhaps, as I tried to explain to Ms Serket many times, you should come back when he is slightly more, ah, with it, as you youngsters say." Gamzee felt the grip of the olive-blooded doctor on his shoulders before he was whisked out. Well, Tavros's condition, both mentally and physically would explain Vriska's attitude anyway.

From the corner of his eye, he could just about see Tavros's out-of-it wave before the door shut.

* * *

**== > Now follow Vriska**

You are now following Vriska Serket

"Why didn't he send an errand boy or something if you're  _so_  concerned about your ego?" the blue-blood smirked.

"Because I ain't taking you to Doc Scratch, I'm taking you to some other chick… not that he's a chick… wait…" The Handmaid paused, having confused herself, then shook her head. "Huh. You're skilled in making people meander from their original path, girl. And anyway there is an errand boy. He'll be accompanying us since I haven't got that technowhatyoumacallit implanted in my brain."

"Come again?"

"Those, eh, micro somethings."

"Microchips?" Vriska offered.

"Yes. Like you, I cannot work my way around this maze," She then hesitated, and it appeared as if she wanted to say more, but prevented herself from doing so. "They'll be here shortly."

And indeed they were. The errand boy, or girl in this case, gave a quick bow before leading them down the winding corridors. Vriska had not really noticed it before, but the ceilings of T.R.O.L.L were very high up, with all of the doors also made to accommodate tall people. In fact, she would not have even noticed if it was not for how the Handmaid, with her lofty height of over seven foot, barely brushed the ceiling with the upper ridge of her horns. How very odd.

They were then shown into a room: Her room.

The woman behind the desk stood, and while she herself was not particularly tall in comparison to the Handmaid, her horns made up for the difference. They were almost half the length of her body and completed the picture of arrogance She gave off.

"Ah, you must be Mindfang junior. I'd recognise those horns anywhere. Sit," She motioned towards a chair, which Vriska took eagerly; the walk to this room had been long. "Handmaid, you are dismissed."

"I think it would be wiser if I stayed." she insisted, her accent and words becoming a little more refined.

"While that may be true, I do not appreciate your blatant disregard for my orders. Now, you will go outside  _now_ ," A vicious snarl wormed its way from Her mouth at the last word that made even Vriska shudder, thankful that the eerie pink eyes were not focused on her. Once the Handmaid had left, She turned back to the blue-blood after sitting behind the desk once more. "Good evening."

"Uh… hey?" Vriska was uncertain as on what to say. There was a strange power emanating from this mutant, whomever she was.

"You seem a lot more gutsy than the other cerulean-bloods. Although that has a lot to do with your upbringing. No daughter of Mindfang would raise limp, weedy children."

"Who the  _fuck_  is-" Vriska began, as hell, way too many hints had been dropped about this woman, and goddamn it she wanted answers!

Yet she only got a few words in before She slammed her hand down on the table and cried, " _You_ will _be silent unless prompted_."

Vriska could do little more than nod meekly. This woman had to be that of the highest possible blood class: tyrian purple. Which was odd, considering that she could have sworn there was only ever one tyrian-blood at a time… Yet she certainly behaved like a true high-blood: the haughty, domineering attitude and violent mood swings.

"Now. I am the Imperial Condesce, and I trust that you will now hold your tongue. Impertinent pup," She snarled, then caught her words and laughed. "My, I'm beginning to sound like my lackeys. We cannot have that."

The Condesce dragged her fingers over the surface of her desk, and at her touch, a screen lit up. With a couple more swipes a portion of the wall began to show what She was seeing on her screen. A projection.

"Now. I have a proposal for you. Your team mate, the boy who was placed last in the rankings. What is his name again?" Her last sentence was more of a mutter as she brought up a list and scanned it briefly. "Ah, Tavros. He is currently lacking legs, and you are missing an arm. Unlike my colleague,  _I_  can get both back for you."

"And the catch?"

"Ha! You're a bold one," Out of nowhere, the Condesce slapped Vriska full around the face, her knife-like nails leaving small lacerations across the bridge of her nose. "Now, what did I just say about speaking out of turn? Ah yes. Don't. But you  _were_  correct. There it a catch for these limb replacements. You know of Doc Scratch? You can speak now, girl."

"Yes." Ugh, Vriska hated how demure she was having to act.

"Well, he has developed a soft spot for this girl. Aradia Medigo," With a brush of the screen, a photo of Aradia appeared on the wall, one while talking to Doc Scratch. And of course, to be evasive and irritating, the shot was taken from behind the chair, so none of him could be seen, save for one hand and the cuff of his green shirt. She would simply have to ask her later what he looks like. "If he becomes too attached, then he will be useless to me. So, I need you to dispose of Aradia for me. I know you are capable of it."

Vriska was too stunned to speak for several moments, before answering back with a hesitant, "What?"

"I want you to kill her."

"I got that much." she replied in a dead-pan voice.

"You are definitely Mindfang's descendant," She sighed. "Let's not play a game of smoke and mirrors though. We both know that you've led to the deaths of countless people. And not only peasant bloods. You've even killed some of my purple bloods."

The strange fins on her face swished back and forwards at this, as if in anger. Yet the fixed expression of mild-amusement masked any irritation she could be feeling at that.

"How do you know?" she demanded, because hell, there was little use trying to play innocent.

"Oh, we've known for years about how your mother earns her money. We've kept tabs on all of the offspring, and yet… you Serket's have always been a tricky bunch. And somehow your mother evaded our capture… until she stupidly called a doctor about your condition. I've always suspected that it had something to do with the Zahhak's sphere of influence. That man could conceal a flying whale if he so wished."

"As in Equius's family?"

Another sharp slap graced her face, but the question was answered nonetheless. "Yes. Your mother and his father have connections. Hmm… I seem to have meandered."

The picture of Aradia was still fixed on the screen, and it was then when something clicked inside of the blue-blood. Remembering her mentor's face and comparing it with that of the Parisian, Vriska found that they were oddly similar.

"Are Aradia and my mentor related?"

With a confused, yet slightly amused expression, the Condesce replied, "That is entirely irrelevant, and all I shall say is this; sometimes people look similar without being related."

Then, with a flick of her wrist, she made a gesture that clearly said 'You are dismissed', and Vriska, not wanting to spend a minute more with this insane woman gladly got to her feet and made her way to the door. Before she left, she could just about hear Her saying, "You  _will_  reconsider."

No sooner had she shut the door, the Handmaid was whisking her away from the room.

"What did she want?"

"Why?"

"Listen, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But just remember this. Do  _not_  get involved in her harebrained ploys. Got it?" the Handmaid ordered. "It will only end badly for you."

With an eyeroll, Vriska turned away from the woman's gaze. Those dark red eyes were unsettling, though no where near in the same league as those of the Condesce. The Handmaid's gaze was concerned while the Condesce's was frightening. And while both were vague shades of red, one was warm and the other cold.

From where she was walking beside the tall woman, Vriska had a good vantage point to see her mentor's face. Indeed, there was something about Aradia and the Handmaid that screamed they were related at the very least. Well, their faces were not entirely similar, and most of this was due to how the Handmaid was a lot older than Aradia at the moment. But there were times when she appeared younger, and in these moments there was a likeness to be seen.

And at the same time, there was something almost alien about both the Handmaid and the Condesce's faces. They were longer, narrower and sharper in bone structure than the average human… and having said that, Vriska notices a similarity in her own face at this. And indeed the rest of the mutants, to a lesser extent. There was more to this story than meets the eye, certainly.

* * *

Your name is Equius Zahhak.

You love being STRONG.

You are so strong, you would surely be the class of the elite legion of RUFFANNIHILATORS. And while such calling would be quite honerable, you would prefer to join the ranks of the ARCHERADICATORS, perhaps the most noble echelon the imperial forces have to offer. Unfortunately, you SUCK AT ARCHERY and have not successfully fired a SINGLE ARROW. Because you are too STRONG. Infact, you've broken so many bows it's BORDERING ON FETISHISTIC. You have to stop. But addiction is a powerful thing.

You have a great appreciation for THE FINE ARTS, and use your connections to acquire PRICELESS MASTERPIECES – highly respected NUDE PORTRAITS. It demonstrates the PUREST PHYSICAL IDEAL sought by those that profuse a LOVE OF STRENGTH. Most, however, think you are merely EXCEPTIONALLY PERVERSE and enjoy looking at the nudity. It makes you FURIOUS. Like almost everything, really.

You have an interest in ROBOTICS, and to help ALLEVIATE YOUR RAGE you frequently make robots which you beat the crap out of, because you are STRONG. And despite their complexities they still BREAK.

A couple of months ago, you began to take on a GREY HUE, at around the same time as your adoptive sister. You were then taken to the DOCTOR and no amount of MATERIAL WEALTH could bribe the authorities to LET IT SLIDE.

Lousy goddamns stupid radiation.


	8. A decision is made

**== > Did you cheat us out a chance to see Vriska when she first realised Tavros's legs had been removed? Be past Vriska!**

Error, unable to be requested character in such a time

**== > Fine, just be Vriska then**

You are now Vriska Serket, and you have come to a decision about something

Vriska had decided to tell Tavros about the ghosts.

As with her previous sneakings, the olive-blooded medic caught Vriska before she managed to slip into the room where Tavros was being kept. It was always 'you will disturb him blah blah' and 'he needs to rest blah blah'. ' _Can't they see I'm trying to make him less weak? Idiots_.'

Because really, at his current state, he could not possible be any  _more_  weak and pathetic… although maybe pathetic was a little harsh on the boy. Besides, focusing all of her energies on his recovery made the ghosts a little less vibrant.

Without his presence, Group Eight had just turned into a sarcastic, slightly irritable duo. And needless to say, the Handmaid did not offer much comedic relief. The ghosts picked up on this instantly and plagued her with increased gusto, and, god, she really just wanted to tell someone already. Because, well, Tavros sort of knew already, did he not? He had caught her in the act of speaking to one of the ghosts, and frankly that was good enough at this place in time.

"Come oooooooon! Just one visit! I haven't seen him since yesterday."

Damn, she just needed to get the secret of the ghosts of her chest. It was getting too much. Even now, she could see their faces at the corners of her vision, sliding and dragging themselves through the long corridors. Their voices whispering and demeaning her throughout the night and days.

"We are concerned that you are stressing him. And since he's already going through an incredibly high-level of stress, I would rather you stayed away."

Oh hell to the no. There was no way after all of the thinking, and mental debating that had gone on; after the meals left barely touched throughout the day and after the bruises she had gotten from the Brobot for not paying attention, just to come up with the decision to tell him, that she was going to be denied this.

So as she had done before, Vriska placed her fingers at her temples, felt the psychic energy roll up within her, and ordered, "Let. Me. In. Oh, and don't interrupt until I'm done."

And unbeknownst to her, the Condesce watched and grinned. Very good, Mindfang junior.

Tavros's doctor stepped aside to let her in, and Vriska quickly sneaked in, just in case her mind-control was a little off that day.

Unlike in the visits of the day before, Tavros was a little more himself as they had placed a leash on the amount of painkillers he had been placed under. What remained of him had been propped up against a fair amount of pillows (Vriska claimed full credit for there being more than one cushion there), and judging by the archaeology book resting on his lap, Aradia had come and gone.

He had heard her from outside, and as such had bookmarked the page and set it down. One did not simply read when Vriska Serket was in the room.

"How's my favourite pitiful cripple doing today?" she asked as a greeting. "Actually, no. Maybe you shouldn't answer."

"Hey, Vriska." Understandably, he sounded all measures of bleak, and while he never sounded  _bouncy_ , per se, his voice lacked the positive factor it had held most of the time before. "Since I'm not, uh, allowed to answer, then, maybe how are you, uhh, then?"

That was fine, a casual opening before unleashing the shit-storm upon him. It would have been more than a little inconsiderate to drop 'hey I'm being stalked by ghosts' on a guy who had just gotten his legs removed, without even a  _little_  opening small talk. Not that Vriska really cared about being considerate or anything, but bluh.

"Well, since you asked, other than a few bruises from brobot, I'm doing fabulous as always," He nodded at her words, and it was clear that he wanted to hear of her day. Evidently, his had been incredibly boring. ' _As it would be without me, of course_.' For a while, she simply told him how  _amaaaaaaaazing_  her day had been, as he listened with a rapt expression. And that was… nice. Most of the time when she spoke to people, they ignored her, or listened only because they were scared of her (fair enough really) or just called her a bitch and left her alone. "I may have something to tell you…"

An increased murmuring sounded from the ghosts. Shit. They could tell something was up.

"Uhh… sure?"

"But, there's one condition, Toreadork. You can't tell anyone, okay? Like, actually no one. No muttering into your pillow, or crying it our in your sleep, or even to your 'bestest bro'. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am." Tavros confirmed with a fairly nervous grin. If Vriska was swearing him to secrecy about what she was about to tell him then, damn, what on earth could it be? What would  _she_  feel so afraid, or frightened of, that she would feel the need to be so secretive over?

And she was serious when she meant she did not want anyone else to hear what she had to say. Even Terezi would probably have laughed if Vriska told her. So, fully aware of the orange flush slowly travelling across the boys face and neck, she leant in close to his ear and began to whisper. To even get so close to his face meant that she had shoved him aside on the bed so she could sit beside him, legs resting atop the covers and crossed in a manner that was most likely offending him at least a  _little_. ' _Well it's not like I haven't caught him staring at my legs before. So really… stretching them out on the bed isn't going to make him sad_ …'

"Do you, uhh, really need to be that, close?"

"Oh please, as if you're not enjoying every moment of my company." she smirked. "Just can it for a bit longer and listen."

Her voice dropped in volume until it became little more than a whisper, with her mouth right next to his ear, and a distinctly scared tone to her words.

"So you know I can make people do shit they don't want to do? Well… I think Aradia can do something similar."

"Aradia?" His voice was obnoxiously loud, and she batted him in the forehead for it.

"I said shush!" Vriska hissed, then leant in again. "I don't know how she did it, or why… well maybe I know  _why_ , but she's made… I don't know, these fucking  _ghost_  things follow me around and… and…"

"Vriska, you, uhh… are you sure?"

"No one's going to believe you, honey," a ghost laughed. "You're stuck with us."

"And now he thinks you're insane!" another chortled from somewhere to the far right of her.

"Of course I'm fucking sure!" Oops, she had yelled that. Then back to a more sensible whisper, she continued, "Would I lie about something like this?"

The silence that came from him said all that she needed to know. Frustrated to the point that she could feel the prickling of tears, Vriska leapt to her feet and headed towards the door.

"Wait!" Her hand paused on the door handle. "I believe you."

Instantly a ghost was onto her with, "He's only saying it out of pity, don't buy this bullshit."

"Oh really?" she said to the boy, relaying the ghosts scepticism with sarcasm clogging her words.

"Just, uhh, come back over here."

And she did. Wedging herself between Tavros's bony shoulder and the bedside table, she put on a suitably unconvinced face and listened to his words.

"Well, I mean, uhh, if Sollux can shoot lasers from his eyes, and you can, uh, use mind-control powers then… Aradia making ghosts, haunt you, that is, uhh, isn't really that crazy an idea."

"Damn right it isn't," she said. "Maaaaaaaan, I'm glad I got that off my chest."

"Isn't there, uh, anything you can do?"

"I've bugged Aradia about it loads, but she hasn't a fucking clue how to get rid of them." Although she was pleased to note that their voices appeared to quieten. It seemed that talking about your problems really  _did_  help.

"Why did she do it, anyway?"

"Oh, uh… it's not important." Vriska was almost a hundred percent certain that had she been typing, a few extra eights would have snuck into her writing.

"If it was nothing, then you, uhh, would just tell me." he smirked; an action that looked funny on Tavros's usually benign face.

"I'm serious."

"So, am I." For a few seconds she stared him right in the eye with a smirk of her own, and to her surprise, Tavros held her gaze.

"Fine. She was asking why you'd gotten ill, like, ages ago. And I suggested that  _maybe_  I had something to do with it, and she didn't really appreciate that."

"How, uhh, was it your faul-" But then, never mind, because he remembered. Speaking of which, the sides of his horns were kind of brushing against Vriska's hair, and it felt really odd… "So, uhh, your horns are growing, pretty… nice?"

"Damn right they are. Although they're nothing compared to yours." she grinned as she ran a finger along the length of his closest horn, fully aware of the consequences as her nails caught a little on each ridge. His face was the picture of embarrassment with his face deeply flushed, and the tips of his pointed teeth visible as he bit his lip furiously to prevent himself from making a noise. Damn, but it was cute. "So, anything else on your mind, Toreadork?"

"Just wondering, uhh, if you have any more, tricks up your sleeve. Regarding legs, that is."

The fingers stroking his horn stopped as she withdrew her hand.

"I already gave up my fucking eye to give you a few stem cells. What do think it's going to take this time?" A snarl entered her voice that quickly killed the teasing vibes.

"It's just, uhh, I heard that the sweaty guy, Equius, is really, uh, good at robotics and stuff. I mean, he could possibly make you an arm and, well, maybe get me some legs?"

"Oh. I see where you're going with this," A smile stretched across her face as she thought up various ploys to get Equius and his expertise… a smile that soon fell when she realised that was probably already the Condesce's plan. Oh well, it was worth a shot anyway, and so she made a mental note to ask Equius about the robotics next dinner time. If she asked over a chat program, there would be a very high chance that the Condesce would eavesdrop. "Well, I'll see what I can do, hotrod."

"Thanks… I just, uhh, I really want my legs back. I mean, I'd just, uhh, gotten used to having them, again. And… it's nice being able to walk." A strange, slightly constricted tone entered his voice, and Vriska knew full well what it meant. She had seen such situations enough times; Tavros was trying his very hardest not to cry. With his eyes screwed tightly shut in an attempt to hold back the tears, he muttered, "Fuck, ugh, stop it, idiot."

Oh god, what were you even supposed to do in such a situation? If there was one thing Vriska could not stand, it was seeing people cry. Although most of the time when her antics got to such points, the victim was soon knocked out. She hated, hated,  _hated_  it! Crying was for weak little babies, and she had no space for it. But obviously, knocking him out was not an option. Seeing the shakes that ran through his body began to panic her.

"Stop crying you baby!" she tried, which yielded less than satisfactory results. What were you supposed to do? What did normal people do? The best she could come up with at the time was to tell him to stop. "I mean it! Ugh, you're pathetic!"

"I'm, sorry. I can't stop. It's stupid," Streaks of orange tinted tears began to run down his face, to both of their horrors. "I, uhh, can't-"

Quickly shifting her position, Vriska turned and grabbed the boy, hugging him closely. Then, with her fingers smoothing over the back-most tufts of his hair, whispered, "It's okay! Jesus! I'll get your stupid legs back. So stop crying already."

Occasionally, when their mother was out doing 'business', and a particularly violent thunderstorm would crash and echo around the house, Vriska's sister would sneak into her bed for comfort. And as a decent sister (it happened now and again), Vriska would sooth the girl's frazzled nerves until she fell asleep, or the storm passed. It was a side she rarely showed, and the blue-blood certainly was not sure as to why she had allowed Tavros of all people to see it, but… it wasn't as if they hadn't slept in the same bed before, right?

Still stroking his hair, she let him sob out all his frustrations onto the crook of her neck. A process that took him a good three minutes, which initially irritated Vriska, because she could be doing so many other useful things right now! Although really, though she would deny it fervently, it was nice being close to someone again. He  _was_  very warm, which was always a plus…

Anyway, he seemed a lot calmer now. His breathing had slowed once more, the hitching to his breaths gone, and the tears that had been wetting her hair stopped altogether. Although his breathing pattern was still a little irregular, so she allowed herself a little while longer hugging him.

A problem then presented itself when they broke off the hug, awkwardness written across both of their faces. How was one supposed to continue with conversation after such an event?

Such a situation was not helped at all by how their horns locked, somehow, in the process of moving back from each other: the tip of Vriska's getting hooked onto the narrower edge of Tavros's. A sensation that curled like flames in her stomach was felt, and it made their lips crash together before they even realised what was happening, despite Vriska's many declarations of 'not expecting sloppy make outs' from her. It would make things even more awkward later on, but to hell with that, the here and now was pretty enjoyable.

Kissing at such an odd angle was near impossible, however, and so it was probably just as well that such activities broke the connection she held on his medic, causing her to storm in with the words, "I  _thought_  I told you no additional stress."

"Does he look stressed to you?" Vriska grinned, slightly flushed, but left nonetheless. "See you later, Toreadumbass."

"Hormones." the olive-blood sighed, before checking the amputated end of his legs once more.

* * *

**== > Oh, okay then. Let's be the princess**

You are now Feferi Peixes

Thinking had been something she had been doing a lot of recently. And, okay, she knew that it was stupid to get so worked up over something as stupid as who Eridan was attracted to, but in such weird times, well… it was kind of nice to think about silly things. Like feelings and stuff.

What if there was a thing between Eridan and Vriska? Because, hey, Vriska was one crazy bitch, and while Feferi could not say that she particularly enjoyed her company, maybe… maybe that's what Eridan needed? A massive bitch to offset his massive ego. Whatever. By the looks he was giving her, he clearly felt  _something_ , and so Feferi was going to be a good friend and respect this.

She had actively made this second decision to drop interest in Eridan at around three in the morning, a couple of hours after she had awoken in hospital from a bad concussion. And oddly, rather than feeling upset by this decision, she felt… freed. Now she did not have these strange feelings for Eridan polluting her mind all the time, things would go back to the simpler days from before. Perfect!

Of course, the sudden destruction of a crush was painful, and a lot of her bounce was sucked from her step, but it would be better in the long run, Feferi reminded herself. Much better.

Eridan, of course, did not seem to notice either way, with most of the battle forgotten to him, including the kiss.

Anyway, Sollux was being a total sweetie about the fight, and came to her the first moment he saw her outside the hospital room to apologise. He did not know what he had done to her, and felt as if he needed to assure himself that it was nothing too horrific.

"Tho wait, your aunt ith manipulating all the leaderth, and they don't even realithe it?"

"Yep." It was refreshing to speak of such things to someone who did not sneer upon all those below his caste. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that the person she was speaking to was a yellow-blood, however. Eridan would probably have said something about how it was her aunts duty to oppress the people. "Well, I think they do realise. But they accept it, and I've haddock up to here with that!"

"You're probably the firtht high-blood that'th ever thaid that."

"What, seriously?"

"Yeah. Motht don't give a thit, ath long ath they get to keep their pothition."

"Ugh!" Feferi fumed. "I don't understand what everyone's problem is! If all this carp about us being 'destined to rule over others' even is true, then it should be our porpoise to ac-shell-y bother taking care of those at the bottom of the hemospectrum."

"Exactly! If you're going to claim it'th your duty to be a high-blood and rule, then they thould at leatht bother to do it properly."

"You know, if I haddock become a mutant, and instead became empress, the first fin I would have done would be to abolish the castes."

"I know. You go on about it enough." Sollux teased, lightly elbowing her in the ribs.

With a smile, she elbowed him back, with, "I don't even! Anyway, I was ac-shell-y going to ask you somefin. Do you think we could spar again, sometime?"

"What, you want thome 'private lethonth'?"

"You know very well I didn't mean it like that, mister! Stop being so glubbing awful!"

"I know. Are we even able to do that, though?"

"I don't know. I could probably pull a few strings-"

"Right after a thpeech on hemo-equality, you thay you'll 'pull a few thtringth'? Hypocrithy ith a terrible thing, Mth Peixeth." Sollux slowly shook his head in mock disgust. "Uthing your blood-cathte ath influence."

"Glubbing hell, you know what I meant!" she laughed, and wow, it was a nice feeling, especially when she realised that the geek had joined in with her.

* * *

**== > Time skip a few days to the decision**

Often, one member from the mutant groups would finish their particular training routines before the rest of their team, resulting in them heading off early. On that particular day, three nights after Vriska's conversation with the Condesce, Kanaya walked into the dining room to find a bored looking cat-girl, and surprisingly enough, a moping spider-bitch.

The blue-blood's eyebrows were drawn tightly together, her face resting on the metal of the table and partially hidden behind her folded arms. Either she was thinking deeply about something, or brooding for the hell of it.

"Are you okay?" Kanaya inquired, hesitantly placing a hand on the shoulder of the wild-haired teen. Vriska flinched visibly, and shifted from her touch so much that she almost gouged the Russian with her horns.

"I'm fine," she replied gruffly. "Just thinking."

"Of course you are."

The jade-blood took her usual place at the opposite end of the bench and watched as Aradia drifted in, looking fairly vacant… as she had been after the battles. Despite the blank look, the Parisian soon engaged Nepeta in a conversation on the durability of the practice dummies in their training room, and how Equius spent ages in the shower.

Noticing how Vriska's eyes remained fixed upon Aradia's form, Kanaya tried to figure out what was on the girl's mind. A task that still proved to be difficult, despite how Kanaya was usually fairly adept at reading people.

"If there is anything you should wish to talk about, I am here for you, you know." Kanaya reminded. At this, Vriska slouched once more, resting her chin on the table and hid the lower-half of her face.

Her voice was understandably a little muffled when she asked quietly, "If you had to do something wrong to do something right… does that make it wrong or right?"

"I'm afraid I don't follow. Like Robin Hood, stealing to give to the poor?"

"He was stealing from rich assholes. Well I think that's how it went. So no. As in, I don't know, let's say murdering an innocent person to save another person's life."

"Ah… why, may I ask?"

"Just Sollux being a dick and giving me these weird questions to think over." Vriska mentally congratulated herself on the save.

"Well, if we look at it from a purely methodical point of view, how many people would benefit, and how many would experience a loss? And, well, you should then weigh in how much those who gain, benefit, and then how much those who lose stand to lose."

The frown on Vriska's forehead deepened until it even rivalled that of Karkat's.

' _If I kill Aradia, the I kill Equius and Nepeta along with her. From this I would receive an arm, and Tavros, his legs. So by Kanaya's suggestion, it would not be worth it… I need to ask the Condesce if the rest of her group would die with her_.'

Vriska stood suddenly and headed towards the door.

The guards stationed there looked down at her as she demanded, "I need to see the Condesce."

With a shared amused look, the guards then prodded her in the shoulder with the tip of an inactivated cattle-prod. "Get back to your table."

"No. I need to see her!"

"Even we haven't seen her. You really think we're going to be able to take you to see someone who isolates herself from her own employees?"

"Lame. Just because you're not important enough. Ugh, well let me go to my training room then."

"Why?

"I need to see my fucking trainer."

Sure enough, one of them finally summoned an errand-boy to guide her there. Upon opening the doors, she was welcomed to the sight of a sweaty Sollux still practicing certain combat moves over and over with the Handmaid.

"… that's much better, kid. Again. This time, remember to keep your knees bent more. Your balance is shit," the Handmaid instructed, before turning to where Vriska was stood. "Your middle training session ended 'bout quarter of an hour ago. What're you doing back?"

"I need to talk to the Condesce."

"Well tough. You can't." the woman replied.

"Why not?"

"She's out of the country, bearcat. Tough luck."

"But I need to ask her something."

"Sollux, we're done here. Go clean up and head to dinner." The Handmaid dismissed the boy and once his ears were out of range, turned back to Vriska.

"Oh? You're on first name terms with  _him_?"

"Depends. Occasionally, when he bothers listening to me, he's half decent," she shrugged. "What did you want to talk to witch about? I already know about who she's asked you to bump off, so don't get your panties in a twist about that."

"I just wanted to know… if I kill her, does the rest of her team also die? Because that's what should happen, right?"

"In most cases, yes," the mentor nodded, heading back to the centre of the room with a joss-stick in one hand, and a lighter in the other. In one fluid motion, she sat down then lit the incense, sticking it into a holder she had produced from her pocket. "But She's deactivated the nanos in them. She's pretty confident that you're going to agree to go along with it. Come here, girl. Sit on the other side of the incense."

"I don't want to get high off your hippie bullshit."

A smirk twitched on the woman's face. "Blunt little shit, aren't you? I'm not trying to get you high, I just want to talk."

"… fine." Vriska sat down heavily. A stupid idea when the floor is concrete. "Fuck, ow."

"The last time we spoke, I discouraged you from- can't you amble any faster, lasers?" Her gaze was stern, and she effectively glared Sollux out of the room for walking slowly. To be fair, he had only just left the bathroom, but the Handmaid did not want him to intercept their conversation. It would have negative effects on them all. "Now. Last time I was discouraging you from whatever she suggested. But I am now able to see that all in all, it turns out okay for all parties… in the end."

"How did you figure that out? And how is death an okay ending for Aradia?"

"Mind your potatoes," she was quick to reply, earning a snort of amusement from Vriska. "Do you know how you're gonna kill her yet?"

"Give me a break. I just decided to do this-"

"Then you're going to die," the Handmaid put it simply. "If you do not compose a plan beforehand, then Aradia will beat you. Your powers have no effect on her, so you won't be able to use them."

"Fuck."

"No, that is not a good plan… unless your love-making is particularly violent." the woman smirked.

"You know that's not even what I meant!"

"Course I do; I'm just messing with you. Now then…"

They spent the remainder of the allotted dinner time discussing how she was going to take out Aradia. It was an… unnerving conversation at best, and Vriska found herself wanting to leave the room several times. The incense helped to keep her calm, however. Perhaps that was why the Handmaid was often found burning it; she needed to remain level-headed after regularly committing atrocious acts? Okay, Vriska was probably thinking too much about it.

The evening training session involved them practicing the main component of their plan. The blue-blood would go about regular training, aka, fighting the brobot with one of the swords, then suddenly attempt to wrench control of Sollux's mind and use his eye lasers to destroy the attacking robot. Sollux had been warned, of course, but the reasons given for this were different to that of the actual intentions behind it.

Interestingly enough, she could only control him around half of the time. Damn. Vriska would be needing all of the luck tomorrow.

And tomorrow, irritatingly enough, came oh so quickly for Vriska, and before she knew it, she was pulling on her boots the next morning and heading towards the dining hall.

It was time to kill Aradia Megido.


	9. Arrivederci Megido

Breakfast was served to the mutants in the usual fashion. Once they were seated, servants entered, each holding a tray of bland porridge or jugs of milk and water. There was no use in starting the fight then, so Vriska remained silent, staring at the false wood grain on the table. Kanaya asked her if she was feeling okay, but the question was shrugged off soundlessly.

It was only once the mutants and a few of the guards remained in the room that the blue-blood raised her fingers to her temples and concentrated on ordering the guards not to intervene. To the casual observer, it would simply look as if the girl was muttering gibberish under her breath, perhaps as the result of a headache. The reality was, obviously, far more sinister. Once they were dealt with, Vriska stood, sliding a mask of cocky confidence over her expressions, to hide the nerves and downright terror at what she was about to do. But despite this, her hands still shook as she clenched and unclenched them on her way over to where Aradia was sat.

A confused look sat on Nepeta's face as she looked up, which led to Aradia turning. Behind stood Vriska.

"Hello, Vriska. What do you want?" she asked, sounding fairly bored.

"Oh... I just thought you should know something," Vriska replied, with the innocent tone to her voice contrasting against the clearly malicious look her face carried.

"Know what? That you've been having secret sloppy make outs with Nitram?" Terezi grinned at her. "Everyone already knows, sorry to ruin the big reveal."

"Fucking delusional as usual, Pyrope," Vriska sighed. "He wishes he could get as much of a glance in his direction from me. Although what I'm about to tell you  _is_  related to him, would you believe it."

On their fatal online role play sessions, while Aradia had never been motherly to Tavros, she had certainly taken him under her wing, as it were, and looked out for him. Their friendship was strong, especially since they had found one another in real life, and so Vriska had decided to use this alliance and turn it to her favor.

"Did you know that I recently got him stem cell therapy for his back, allowing him to walk again, only to have some meddler get in the way and  _chop them off_?"

"Quoi? Euh, what are you... I already knew his legs have been, er, removed. I visited him recently."

Terezi's eyes narrowed in suspicion: not that it could be seen from behind the glasses. "What are you are you trying to pull?"

"Assuming that I'm always scheming and up to something. Classic Terezi. You're being very predictable today!" the blue-blood cackled, before turning back to Aradia. "Well... Anything to say to that? Anything... ooh, slightly... wrong?"

"Wait... you said you got him stem cell therapy? Why would he need that?" And then, the pieces clicked together. Tavros had not been in a wheelchair because he was tired, but because he had been... paralyzed? Well, it certainly made more sense, and Aradia had been suspecting as such. But then, wait, judging by Vriska's clearly taunting grin, she must have had something to do with it!

"Are you saying that you paralyzed him?" The Parisian's once friendly voice had turned icy cold as she looked up at the Brit. Both vaguely took in the other mutants trying to dissuade them from the imminent fight, but they were so focused on the other's actions and words that they blocked the noise out.

"Perhap-" Yet her sentence went no further, as suddenly the ghosts around her, the very same ghosts that had quieted down after she had spoken about them to Tavros, suddenly increased in volume tenfold. It was currently taking all she had to not fall to the ground weeping, but she was going to need to do a lot more than simply stay standing to beat Aradia.

"What did you do to him?" she demanded as she rose to her feet looking for all intents and purposes like an enraged goddess out for revenge. "And I don't care that you got him his legs back again. You clearly feel no remorse!"

With a quick sweep of her arm, the dice hidden in Vriska's sleeve were cast.

13425411... So 11123445.

"I pushed him out of a window, back in the village because he was being slow. But Tavros, being the lame little shit he is, fell on his back. So bye-bye legs."

Luck was apparently out to get her as well, and Vriska found herself questioning her decision in attacking Aradia today. She really should have waited for a day where her luck would be high, goddamn it! But too late now.

At the dice's command, a strange pig like creature materialized before her, which made short work of wandering towards Aradia and commenced chewing at a part of her boot.

"Je comprends pas... are you mocking me?"

With a sigh that sounded more like a snarl, Vriska gathered the dice and threw them again... lousy goddamn stupid luck.

73816456, translating to 13456678.

An orb of energy began to form in the air, crackling slightly until it became the size of a football, then dispersed in a pulsating wave towards its target: Aradia. But irritatingly enough, she dodged it with ease, so with a snarl, Vriska cast again.

61836152… 11234668.

A bolt of lightning shot down from an area just above the girl's head, yet again, she leapt backwards, avoiding the worst of the attack.

"Make the ghosts shut the fuck up already!" the spider-bitch cried as she dashed forwards with the full intention to punch the maroon-blood in the jaw. As Aradia had been expecting another psychic attack, she was unprepared and so Vriska's fist clipped her cheek, shortly followed by the other, which knocked her to the ground.

"This isn't only about the ghosts, is it?" she commented, resulting in said ghosts cackling. "Or about how you did something to Tavros."

"She's brighter than she looks." a ghost said, sounding surprised.

The Handmaid had clearly said that Vriska would not be able to beat Aradia at their current strengths, but she was honestly not expecting their fight to go this terribly.

The plan!

Then, as if luck was finally starting to take a shine on Vriska once more, Sollux got to his feet and grabbed the blue-blood by the arms.

"That'th enough." His tone was final, and his grip tight around the top of her arms… not that she was really trying to escape.

This was merely another stage of her plan… which quickly clicked in Sollux's mind as well, making his eyes widen behind the glasses as he realized what she was about to make him do.

Taking him only partially by surprise, she managed to wrench her arms free of his grip, fling them to the sides of her head and steal the control of Sollux's actions. Perhaps her earlier bad luck was simply so that this would be the moment where his mind was accessible to her.

How very lucky.

"Arrivederci Megido."

Perhaps a tenth of a second passed, if that, before Vriska dropped to her knees and the optic blasts were released at full force, straight into Aradia and singeing the very tip of one of Vriska's horns.

" _Jethuth fucking Chritht, Vrithka_!" Sollux screamed as he rushed towards what remained of Aradia. Her body was terribly burnt, like the surface of an overcooked joint of meat. A certain smell hung thick in the air, a smell that was disturbingly like pork, but perhaps the worst part was that Aradia was still alive, judging by the quick gasps coming from her blackened chest.

62157348… 12345678.

Guillotine de la marquise.

The head was severed from the body quickly, ending Aradia's suffering.

While concerned and distressed at the loss of a good friend, Nepeta also found herself worrying about her own state of survival, because, weren't the other members of the group supposed to die when one member kicked the bucket? Evidently, it was not the case for their group…

While the mutants rushed around the body, crying out in horror and disgust, screaming at Vriska or silently staring in fear, a strange occurrence began to take place that none could see.

Aradia had always been a strong psychic, even before the mutations began. The development of being able to see people's energies move around them was only a further addition to something she already had. As such, when the head was severed from her body, she felt such an overwhelming wave of anger, and such a strong desire to  _live_  so that she could kick that bitches arse, that her life force was caught before it could be reborn elsewhere.

Her soul, as it were, hovered above her burnt corpse, noting the scene below with little care. Though it should have made her sob and weep to see her body destroyed in such a way… oddly, she was okay with it.

And thinking about it… Vriska's murder… she was okay with that as well. Aradia frowned. Something seemed a little off with how little she was caring but… really, it seemed silly to get angry with the girl, when she was clearly only killing her to get something. Perhaps someone's life was on the line, because knowing the Condesce that was entirely possible.

Aradia had met the woman just once to discuss any powers she may have been developing, and honestly, she even preferred Doc Scratch to that creep of a high-blood.

Well, now she had stopped her soul from being moved on… what was there to do now? Already she could feel the control she had over it beginning to lessen, and while she guessed she was okay with not getting her revenge now… she still did not really want to go after having cheated death for just a while longer. There had to be a way to stay as herself… perhaps if she were to temporarily take refuge in another's body?

But then… what if she pushed out their soul in the process? Whatever, she was okay with that. Besides, she had a feeling that such an occurrence would not happen. So if both energies would reside in the same body, then she would need someone strong… someone who could take two sets of energies living inside them.

Equius would not find out that Aradia had essentially hidden her soul inside him until he climbed into his sleeping pod, and was greeted with a voice chiming inside his skull, ' _Apologies for the inconvenience, but I will be taking refuge inside your physical form until I can find another suitable host_.'

She learned many new curse words that night, both regional Scottish ones, and English.

* * *

**== > Be the Handmaid**

You are now the Handmaid, on your way to Doc Scratch

When the errand boy arrived at her side, she knew immediately who had sent for her. Doc Scratch had his own set of errand boys, which he sent out to do his dirty work. The Handmaid herself could probably be included in this group. And this group were all female, from ages eighteen to twenty-five, with matching green and white suits. Strange man. He had not changed a bit.

When she arrived at his office, he was resting his head in his hands, but looked up as she entered.

"Ah, hello, my dear," he smiled and sat up straight. "Have you been informed of the bad news?"

"If it is what I think you are referring to, then yes, I have."

"Such a sad occurrence," the man sighed. "I cannot even begin to imagine why Ms Serket would so suddenly murder like that… it does not add up."

"Oh come on, Doc. It's obvious!  _She_  made her do it do get something that She wanted." The Handmaid was blunt, but it had to be said.

"How can you be so casual about this?"

"Because everything turns out to be the cat's whiskers. Trust me."

With another heavy sigh, Doc Scratch moved the white orb from his desk, and placed it on top of a filing cabinet behind him. It was this device which prevented Mindfang and her descendants from asserting control over him. Although predictably, it was awkward and unwieldy to use, so there had been no more made of it.

As of late, the Doc's age had been showing. His hair had already been a light blond, but the Handmaid could see a few grey-white streaks beginning to form. And… before, those lines around his mouth, and the creases at the corner of his eyes vanished when he wasn't smiling.

"Aradia was your descendant."

"I was going to comment on how it is unlikely that I was even be alive to see her, but… never mind."

"Have you actually done any research into her family history? It could key you into certain factors of your future, given that you have not had her great-grandmother yet… or whichever relation to her it will be."

"Ugh, spoilers. I haven't the time to be fussing about which man I do the dirty with."

"You say that now, however Ms Megido was the only one of the descendants to have a skill set different to that of her ancestor. Which means only one thing."

"And what would that be, Doc?" she replied, one eyebrow raised well above the other as she prepared herself for whatever bullshit the man was about to bring up.

"It would mean that at some point along the line, another Alternian has had a hand in her genetics."

"Are you sure?"

"Almost certainly. Mutations only account for so much of the changes in skill sets. In fact, the percentage chance that it would be due to that are so minimal, they are hardly worth taking into account," A devilish grin then spread across his pale face. "What I am suggesting, is that you will, at some point in your future, 'do the dirty' with-"

"If that's all you called me here for, then I'm leaving, Doc," she said, with a small grin to match his. "I don't wanna have to endure more of your matchmaking bull. You remember that kid back in the twenties?"

"Oh really, my dear, you cannot hold every decision I make to that  _one_  poor choice in suitor."

"I can, I have and I will. Now, I have important business to be gettin' on with."

"Wait. One final thing. Have you any idea on when the next time skip will be?"

The Handmaid frowned, "My times were fairly vague this time around. It should be in two days time, but I did not give myself the time of when it will happen."

"Very well. I shall begin to make preparations shortly."

"Thanks, Doc." She then left the room.

Currently, she had a cranium filled with headaches, a group filled with pea-brains and a schedule crammed with calming down Vriska.

* * *

**== > Two months later?**

Two months have passed, and you are now Equius Zahhak

There.

The set of legs and the arm were now finished, all three gleaming and glinting silver in the bright light. They appeared to be like an incomplete set of armour when placed together, almost as if Equius had simply stolen the legs and an arm from one of the ancient suits of armour in his manor.

Although while Equius was more than adept at creating robotics, he was not so good at operating on people, so with a document of instructions for the robot's operator, he was done. Yet he still stayed to watch the operation, just to make sure that nothing went wrong… but what he had not fully realized is that Vriska would have to be topless for the procedure to carry through.

It was just the human body, right? Besides, it was not as if she had anything up there anyway. Her chest was quite literally as flat as a pancake. In fact, she was even more flat-chested than him without those pectorals of his. But it still felt exceptionally lewd, disgusting behavior for a blue-blood, and so he asked if there was any way to cover her. Eventually, a strip of gauze was secured over the offending area.

With a gentle hum filling the room, the robot switched on. The machinery was simply a set of four arm-like pieces of metal, the tools at the end of these able to change from a variety of different knives and such.

The arm itself was slightly too big for Vriska to compensate for the growth that she would soon experience. He had not fussed too much on making it look human, except in shape. It was made of a light coloured metal, with two large plates covering the top and bottoms of her arm to hide and protect the wiring and artificial muscles. Something he  _had_  decided to experiment with, however, were the joints for her wrist and elbow. Unlike with a normal arm, he had designed them to be ball and socket joints, with the wires feeding through the joint. The increased amount of movement derived from this would please Vriska, he decided.

But what he had not taken into account was how much of her original arm remained. His design was made to begin at the shoulder, and so the remaining section of her arm was removed, and the real operation began.

Attaching the new arm to her shoulder was relatively simple for the robot, and this section was not the part that Equius was particularly worried about; that was the next part of the procedure.

Once the robotics were secured to her body, the wires that would allow sensation to be felt needed to be inserted. For this, the sheet of pectoral muscles on the left hand side of her body were peeled up from the ribcage, and a series of small artificial nerve fibers were placed down.

Well… it seemed that everything had gone correctly, and Tavros's operation passed in a similarly successful manner.

Good. Such was the level of quality that one should expect from a highblood. Creating sensation in the limbs had been an extra amount of hard work, but Equius threw himself whole-heartedly into it. Like Vriska, focusing the mind on something else helped quiet the voices in his mind, or rather, the  _voice_.

He was still wary of Vriska, as anyone would be after watching them manipulate someone in killing a girl. But from what he could gather from Aradia's musings and the Condesce, Vriska had been told to kill the low-blood in return for robotic appendages.

' _The second round of battles should be pretty soon_ ,' Aradia mused, a voice only heard by herself and Equius. ' _I wonder if they'll have grown accustomed to their limbs by then_.'

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for the majority of the time, she could not hear his thoughts, so if he wished to reply to her messages he had to speak aloud or write his messages down. Needless to say he hoped that she would find a new host body as soon as possible.

* * *

The second round of battles have now begun. The mutants have been separated into pairs and placed in three different battle bubbles. Would you like to follow the first, second or third battling pair?

**== > Uh… the third. Three is a magic number, right?**

You are now following the battle of Gamzee Makara versus Tavros Nitram

The blare of a klaxon sounded, which meant for the two fighters to rush towards each other, perhaps with their weapons in hand in a bid to knockout the other as soon as possible. But this did not happen with the two fighters just mentioned. Unlike with the previous round, the mutants were not told previously who they would be up against, so when these two saw whom they were up against, neither looked particularly thrilled.

"Hey, Tavbro."

"Uhh, hey." The lance in his hand felt all the heavier as he gave nervous glances around the dome. Given what had happened in the last round, where the purple fog had filled the room and made Kanaya chainsaw his legs off, the boy was understandably a little nervous.

Why was it that whenever he got the use of his legs back, a sense of foreboding filled him? Evidently, some cruel god was messing with him.

"Hey, Gamzee?"

"Yeah?"

"If, uhh, that purple gas that makes you, uh, get really, violent come in… I'm sorry in, uhh, advance for anything I might, do."

"Right fuckin' back at you, bro." Just thinking about that purple stuff made his neck sore. While Aradia's death had been horrifically traumatic for all to see it… part of him was a little relieved that she was gone after what she had done to him. And he knew from a reliable source that her mind had not been subject to the rage created by the fog, so she could not exactly use that as an excuse for her violence.

Ugh, gnawing through someone's neck! That was downright nasty.

"This is an announcement from the head of this institute. With great regret, it seems that you have all forgotten the purpose of the klaxon. Here, let me assist you all. It means that you are supposed to begin the fighting.

'Now, I would  _hate_  for it to come to the tyrian mist just to get you aggressive enough to fight, as we all know how terribly that turned out last time for some of you. But, if you do not, ah, get your act together, as I believe it is said, then my hand will be forced. May the best group win."

There was nothing encouraging in her words, yet they had exactly the desired effect that the woman speaking them wanted. Almost immediately, Gamzee began to spin the pair of clubs he held around in his hand.

"Sorry, my motherfuckin' brother. But if we get our motherfuckin' fighting on while we're still ourselves, we won't have to fuckin' worry about getting all up and nasty with that mist."

If he could just hit the boy on the side of the head hard enough with one of his clubs, then the battle would be over quickly and Gamzee would not have to worry about hurting Tavros. But, shit, with those sweet new robotic legs, the kid was  _fast_ , and managed to dodge the lethargic slings of his clubs with hear ease.

Tavros, it seemed, was fed up with being beaten.

"This, uhh, may be a fake battle, and everything, uh, since it's just against you. But that, uhh, doesn't mean I've gottta, or want to, lose." A cheeky grin spread across the boy's face as he hoisted the lance into a more comfortable position on his shoulder.

"Don't let anyone fuckin' tell you to do otherwise, my motherfucker."

"Heh!" Tavros laughed, as he dashed forward with the lance, although honestly, he was not entirely sure as on what to do with it. All you could really do with a lance was, well, stab people. And he certainly did not want to do that.

Perhaps if he could get Gamzee to drop one of the clubs? He could then use that to his advantage. Well, to further the advantage of having robotic legs anyways.

This was almost like a play fight, and both parties involved were so far finding it amusing enough.

While he dodged the increasingly numerous attacks from Gamzee, Tavros tried to discern whether there was a side that the stoner favoured. Just like in the movies, and the stories that Aradia sent him about daring explorers fighting rivals. But it turned out that in the real world, figuring out such a thing in the heat of battle was not really an option for him.

Not paying attention, the Hispanic boy turned to soon, rewarding him with a sharp CRACK against one of his robotic legs, making him gasp at the pain and knocking him to the ground. Oh well, at least he could confidently tell Equius the next time he saw him that the fake nerves worked. Well, probably not  _confidently_ , per se, because the sweaty blue-blood creeped him out a little.

Without a moment's thought, Tavros grabbed the lance from where it had been dropped no more than a foot away, and angled it  _up_ , the pointed tip resting lightly against the high-blood's skin. This halted both the clubs that had previously been aimed at Tavros's skull.

"Looks like I, uhh, won, I guess?"

"I guess you up and motherfuckin' did, well done, bro." All of a sudden, the grin stretched across Gamzee's face appeared horrific, crude and mocking, with the hand that reached over to ruffle his hair becoming disgustingly patronizing.

"I don't want to win just because you, uh, let me." Without either of them noticing, a faint purple tint began to stain the air.

"That's fuckin' fine with me," Gamzee chuckled, " _Because I wouldn't feel motherfuckin' chill with letting you win either_!"

Yet because the dosage in these rounds was significantly less than last time, a sense of empathy still stuck to Tavros, and so rather than use the lance to spear him through the jaw, he instead grabbed the clubs from Gamzee, and before the other knew it, smashed him around the head with one.

The Aussie crumpled to the floor, as a voice announced, "Tavros Nitram, first victor."

* * *

**== > How about… the first battling pair now?**

You are now following the battle of Terezi Pyrope versus Vriska Serket

"Nice cane." Vriska commented as she took in the girl stood before her. Unlike Terezi's last battle, where she had used her cane as a staff, this time round, she had been given something new to try. It was another cane: long, white and topped with a carving of a dragons head, in some material she had never seen, well, felt or sniffed, before. Inside the main body of the cane was a sharp, narrow sword of the same substance, but the teal-blood was hoping she would not have to resort to such means.

Sure, Vriska got  _very_  into the role-plays they did together, but it was only on very rare occasions that one of them would actually get hurt. And even then, it was never very serious.

But maybe today was to be the day that the injuries would be serious…

As with the third pair of fighters, the head of facilities message sounded throughout their fighting bubble. Yet neither Vriska or Terezi had been affected by the purple gas, and while they were assuming that they probably would not be impacted by it the second time round, they could not afford to take that chance.

Besides, Terezi was still furious at Vriska for the murder of Aradia; no one knew that she still lived in some form other than Equius. And for obvious reasons.

The gas began to pump into the room, but as before, it had no effect on either of the mutants.

"Come oooooooon, Terezi. One of us has to beat the other sooner or later." Vriska cackled, yet something was slightly… off about her. There were deep bags under her eyes, indicating that she had not slept properly in, well, two months. Perhaps she did have a heart after all. But that did not excuse the fact that she killed the girl in the first place.

With a shriek, Vriska lunged towards Terezi, knife in hand. While the knife was easily avoided, the attack caused by dice cast on the floor was not. Terezi, being blind, could not see the number they cast, she could only smell the blue streaks that passed through the air, before her ears picked up the vibrations in the air as they hit the ground.

Judging by the stifled snort of amusement from the other girl, chances were it was a good attack. She also managed to draw this conclusion from the sudden large amounts of orange flowing on Vriska's knife. Was that… fire? The heat receptors on her face said, yes.

"Still not talking to me?" the Brit pouted, slashing forwards with the now alight knife. How was it not burning her hand? "Lame as usual."

Terezi quickly swung her cane up, blocking Vriska's knife as it aimed towards her chest. For a few seconds, they had a contest of strength, with both members struggling the best they could to push their weapon forwards. The fires on Vriska's blade were her downfall, as the heat generated by them was unbearable on her face, and so with a snarl, she backed off, scooping the dice up in her hands.

Cast!

3842162… 1223468

Wait… there were only seven dice?

"Jokes on you, Serket." Terezi said, holding the other dice up between her thumb and forefinger. Then, in one sweeping motion, she pulled the sword from her cane, leapt behind the girl and sliced at the back of her legs, making Vriska fall to her knees.

"That, was for Tavros," The sword was slid back into the cane, and then, with a firm ' _thunk_ ', Terezi smacked the dragon-headed hilt around the top of her head. Vriska collapsed against the icy concrete flooring. "And that was for Vriska. Justice has been partially dealt."

"Terezi Pyrope! Second victor."

* * *

**== > Well there's only one pair left, so be them**

You are now following the third and final battle of Karkat Vantas versus Sollux Captor

"Heh, hey, KK," drawled Sollux. "Lookth like you're fighting me. Don't flip your thit or anything."

"Why would I flip my shit about that?" Karkat replied, a scowl drawing his eyebrows tightly together.

"Becauthe you flip your thit about everything." the geek shrugged.

Karkat's scowl grew deeper, "Well will you look at this. Here is my shit, and yet it remains unflipped. It's a miracle. But don't tell Gamzee I used the m-word. Fuck, he can probably sense I used it with his weird religions powers or whatever the fuck would be a better word for that. I'm practically distracting him from the fight, just thinking about fucking miracles, like the embarrassing shit-stain he is."

"Wow, okay, calm the fuck down. Thee, flipping your thit, what did I thay?"

"Fuck."

In the months they had spent in the retainment organization, Sollux had indeed gained far better control of his optic blasts with the help of the Handmaid. She was probably the perfect teacher for him, and could only be improved upon if she, too, had optic blasts. When he was pointlessly moping, she would give him a small amount of support, before telling him firmly to 'get his arse into gear' and 'stop wasting time, we have work to do'.

The knowledge that he had killed Aradia in a way weighed down heavily on his shoulders, meaning that he slunk easily into long bouts of misery. Working on his fighting made this knowledge slink further back in his mind, however. Yet Vriska still had to have her own different times for training, as nearly every mutant wanted to rip into her. While the others slept and ate, she trained with the Condesce, which was exactly as horrifying as it sounded. Without this distraction then, both Tavros and Sollux improved in vast swathes. The robotic legs helped a lot for Tavros as well.

So when Karkat lurched towards him with his sickles firmly in hand, Sollux released a fairly reserved beam from his eyes that did no more than knock the blade from one hand.

"Ah fuck, now you're off balance."

"This isn't a lesson in fucking feng-shui. Did you not get the memo? This is where we beat the respective shit out from each other so much with our sickle kind and whatever-the-fuck-is-coming-out-of-your-eyes kind that one of us keels over with grub-sauce leaking from various orifices, which will be you; and no I won't tag that spoiler."

"Jethuth Chritht, Karkat. Hath your perthonality alwayth been thith bubbly and warm, or are you jutht cruthing on me?" Sollux smirked, sending a barrage of beams at Karkat, which, to the other boy's credit, he dodged very well, or deflected off the reflective surface of his sickle blades.

The battle changed completely when the purple gas filtered into the room, however. While it was a significantly smaller dosage than before, Karkat was still affected, with his pupils shrinking to pinheads instantly. But unlike last time, Sollux was completely unaffected-

" _Thit! Fucking Chritht, KK_!" he shrieked as he leapt aside, only narrowly avoiding the other boy's violent attack. It was as if the boy was possessed, which in a way, he was, as he sliced at Sollux as if his life depended upon it.

Since he himself had been under the influence of the fog last time, all that he knew of people affected by it was from Feferi… and she had been a little reluctant to share her experience, understandably.

It was odd, really, that the smaller dosage was having a larger effect on Karkat. But perhaps that was because less of the air was being taken up with the stimulant, so more of it was breathable? Eh, Sollux didn't really have time to be thinking of such matters.

CLANG!

The metal of the sickles bounced off the glass, creating an earsplitting screech.

CRACK!

The Californian had managed to pin Sollux to the ground, smashing the sickles down towards his face. But right at the last moment, he flung the top half of his body forwards, head butting the kid right in the chest.

BZAM!

Unable to think of another alternative to end the battle quickly, and still win it himself, Sollux pulled off the glasses and shot a concentrated beam of energy right at the possessed boy's upper-half, enough to bruise and hit hard, but not enough to burn.

With the force of the optic blasts, the boy was flung backwards, hitting the glass walls of the bubble with a 'gong', before sliding back down.

Sollux was not to know it, but that was the exact way he had beaten Feferi in the previous round.

"Sollux Captor, final victor. Group Eight ranked first."

* * *

Your name is Terezi Pyrope.

You are pretty enthusiastic about dragons. But you have a PARTICULAR AFFECTION for their COLOURFUL SCALES. Too bad there's no such thing as dragons or you would use them to decorate your home. Your home is located deep in the woods, which makes the school run take a PRETTY LONG TIME, but you wouldn't have it ANY OTHER WAY. Your mum's almost always out, however, so you surround yourself with a variety of plushie pals known as SCALEMATES. Large amounts of LIVE ACTION ROLE PLAYING come from them.

You take an interest in justice, holding particular fascination for ORCHESTRATING THE DEMISE OF THE WICKED. You have taken up study of both BRITISH and INTERNATIONAL law, and surround yourself with legal books. You hope one day to join the honorable ranks of the LEGISLACERATORS along with your mother.

When your skin began to turn GREY, you told your mum IMMEDIATELY, and using her INFLUENCE OVER THE LEGAL SYSTEM she managed to hide you to some extent. Although her deceit to the law STUNK and you handed yourself in.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	10. The Psiioniic

Your name is Gamzee Makara.

You get pretty excited by CLOWNS OF A GRIM PERSUASION WHICH MAY NOT BE IN FULL POSSESSION OF THEIR MENTAL FACULTIES. You belong to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT. The beliefs of this cult are SOMEWHAT FROWNED UPON by those dwelling in more common lawnrings. But you don't care, you got to be going with what feels right at where your heart's up in, you know?

You used to like to practice on your ONE WHEEL DEVICE, which you were GOD AWFUL AT because your FEET DID NOT REACH THE PEDALS. You enjoy a FINE BEVERAGE, and like to do A LITTLE BAKING SOMETIMES. You had ALL THESE HORNS all over the place, and sometimes you stood on them and SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF YOURSELF.

You know the drill by now, your skin TURNED GREY. A tourist noticed while you were SWIMMING and thought you'd been BITTEN BY SOME WEIRD CREATURE and subsequently FLIPPED THE MOTHERFUCK OUT. You were quarantined for NEARLY A MONTH before you were sent in. You dad was on a business trip the whole time, and as such still does not know your whereabouts. He has filled a MISSING PERSON notice, yet the authorities will not deliver.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.

* * *

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling adiosToreador

AG: Tavros?

AG: Taaaaaaaavros?

AG: Why is no one replying, jeez

AG: ::::\

adiosToreador is now offline

AG: Oh wow w8 a second, please make that a little less fucking su8tle, I'm not sure what you're trying to say

AG: You know

AG: The only way you could've made it more su8tle was may8e if you'd written

AG: uHH,,,, PLEASE LEAVE ME, ALONE, vRISKA,,,

AG: yOURE,, UHH, TOO PRETTY AND SMART, FOR ME,,

AG: Award to Vriska Serket, for the 8est impression of Tavros Nitram since ever.

AG: Or may8e if you made a powerpoint, with every page having 'fUCK OFF,,' written in 8right red comic sans in the centre of twenty slides.

AG: Size 48

AG: 8old.

AG: 8luh! Fuck this!

AG: I just want to talk to someone! Do you have any idea how fucking 8oring it is having only the condesse or whatever her name is to speak to?

AG: Here's a clue: loads.

AG: Oh gr8

AG: Now I look like one of those losers that carries on speaking to people when they've logged off

AG: Fuck you toreadum8ass

arachnidsGrip [AG] is now offline

* * *

Swing music was the was the main component of that night's entertainment, and several couples danced in the centre of the ballroom to the sound of the singer's smooth voice. The room itself was vast, with stained-glass windows lining the walls, and several vast, crystal chandeliers dangling near precariously above the dancers. A warm, yellow light filled the room thanks to these, and it put the guests at ease, which, really, was quite needed when hosting such an event.

One such couple dancing was the mayor of Phoenix and her husband, alongside the current president of the United States of America and his husband. Indigo and purple-bloods created the bulk of the crowds, although cerulean-bloods, teals and even the odd yellow or maroon-blood threaded their way through the masses. All in all, this was a high-profile party, with important people from around the world attending, and all because of one reason. The onset of another war.

Perhaps such a jovial ball could offset it? Unlikely. But it did not matter, for such a precious collection of VIPs was prime material for… certain individuals.

In a dark area of the room, seated before a delicious meal of pasta was a tall young woman, sitting quite comfortably on the curvy side of skinny with black hair that tumbled in thick waves down her back.

Clad in a green dress with a slit high up one thigh, she commanded the attention of the man beside her entirely, careful not to let the usual cruel expression on her face come out to play. So she softened her features, made the angular slices of her cheekbones, the narrow straight of her nose and the near exotic curvature to her brows appear friendly, human even. The slash of cerulean warped into a smile, one that with much practice, reached her eyes and made the poor man melt.

"I guess it would not be a problem." he concluded, and stood, pulling her chair out for her.

"Merci, monsieur," the woman purred. It was like god had created her for him, she even had that low voiced French accent that he found obscenely attractive. Okay, so she was probably ten years his junior, but she looked over twenty, so it would be fine. "So I take it you must be the owner of this establishment?"

"Ah, no, I simply work here."

"And you are not working tonight?" Her eyes widened with confusion.

"I have a high placed job, being of the caste I am, purple, so I was invited as a guest."

"How delightful for you," she said, careful to keep sarcasm from her tone. So he was the type to boast of his blood-caste… interesting. Although he clearly could not afford the half-decent face-paint that the most illustrious members of this ball could, judging by the smudges of grey on his dark-coloured shirt. "So, where will be start?"

After getting them past the guards 'I work here, she's with me,' he started them up the stairs.

"Anywhere in mind, sweetheart?"

She giggled, then placed a well-timed stumble afterwards, resulting in her grabbing the sleeve of his tuxedo. Her research showed than his type of men were into that kind of stuff. The weak, vulnerable woman that needed to be protected. It disgusted her, but it was necessary to further the deception.

"I'd love to see the conference room, if possible," His expression hardened a little suggesting that maybe that was too off limits for the mere impressing of a woman he wanted to screw. Damn, she would need to taunt him more. "I mean, if you cannot get me in there, that is fine. I'll head back downstairs."

The arm was released from her grip and she sashayed away, careful to swing her hips  _just_  right, since apparently she did not have a large-enough chest to use  _that_  form of seduction.

"Wait, I should be able to do it." The first true smile of the night, a cruel smirk, tugged on the corners of her mouth, before she turned it sweet once more, and span to face him.

"Thank you, I was so looking forwards to this!"

Running a playful finger up his horn, she felt a small part of herself disappointed at his reaction. Although really, what was she expecting when it was fake?

A code was needed, as they had suspected, but with the man's help she was soon in.

All that was needed for her to do in this room was scrape a line of blue from her nail-varnish onto the wall, releasing the nanobots, which would reproduce and then form the seeing and hearing devices her people desired. But she made sure to spend an extra few minutes in the room so as to not appear suspicious.

Once done with this, they slunk out, the door sealing shut behind them, secure and completely burglar-proof. The woman shrugged, adjusting the white fur boa she had draped over her shoulders and arms. Real fur, apparently. Although she had no idea where the owner had gotten it from, or indeed, how they had afforded it. The owner of the boa and dress was an elusive woman at best.

Now she had the problem of what to do with this man now that she no longer needed him. She could not use her powers on him, as the security tapes would pick it up, and her boss would give her hell. Unless she could use him again to open the next door she needed to enter… certainly it would appear a little less suspicious than picking the lock. And unlike the rest of the guests at this party, this particular woman could not simply remove her horns and grey skin.

"Could you maybe show me one more place, bitte?" she said. Wait, fuck, no. Bitte was German, not French. Ugh, she needed more sleep, but it seemed he had not noticed, so whatever.

Being so desperate to please her, the man took her to this next room.

"Just around the corner- hey, what are you doing here?" her companion cried suddenly at the sight of two young men. "This area is off limits to guests, I suggest you leave before I call security."

The taller of the two snorted, "Yeah, thure. But jutht tho you know, you've got an actual murant right there behind you. I wouldn't turn your back on her."

"Excuse me?"

"How dare you fling such insults about! I have never even met you before in my life!" she cried indignantly, appearing insulted even though this man had hit the nail on the head with his words.

This merited a closer look, and so as subtly as she could, she examined the duo before her. One was ridiculously tall, and the other about her height, horns not included. Both had side-burns, oddly enough, both were easy on the eyes in the looks department, and both had a very real looking yellow whites of their eyes. Odd.

"She couldn't possibly be a mutant. This is a costume party, and if her outfit is good enough to merit being mistaken for an actual mutant, then…" And then the man paused to think. She was being unusually troublesome for the usual blank, air headed women that came here… and her features looked odd, to put it bluntly. There was something just a little too real about her grey skin, and sharp teeth, and long ears and the fucking horns. "You're saying that she is an actual mutant?"

"Thure. Just try pulling her hornth off." shrugged the taller of the two, to which the woman leapt back at, blocking the man's reaching hand.

"I wouldn't, uh, touch those if I were you," the shorter then commented, with his grin spreading wider as if remembering an amusing memory. "They're a pretty sensitive area."

"And didn't I thay don't turn your back on her?" the taller said as the man turned to face him. The employee sneered, yet he did just what he had suggested, turned to look at her, then… next thing he knew he was sitting at a table, eating the plate of pasta that the woman he had been with earlier was picking at… huh?

"Blow my fucking cover why not!" the woman fumed once the keys for the room had been dropped in her hand, and the man was walking away. "I could've been in and out of there easily if it weren't for you shit sacks. And I wouldn't have had to use my power either." She grumbled under her voice for a while longer before turning back to the pair of mutants, the fake French accent having been substituted with her native English. "So who are you?"

"Taurus."

"Gemini."

"Oh, are we using that lame codename bullshit? Then Scorpio."

The Condesce had decided giving her mutant solders codenames to be a seemingly good idea, much to the horror of said soldiers. With the exception of Scorpio, the mutants were trained in batches of twelve, with their codenames linked to the symbols printed on their shirts. According to the Condesce, the only reason she was spending so much time with Scorpio was because she 'owed it to someone'.

Frankly, all Scorpio could think of when she had revealed that, was what someone even had to do to make the Condesce owe them something…

Even though they almost recognized each other, none gave any indication of it. It was easier to complete this challenge without the weight of previous emotions getting in the way; although the lisped gentleman, Gemini, frowned at her words, suggesting a severe dislike of her at best. It seemed that particular feeling had not faded over the years they had been apart, if he was indeed who she suspected he was, though she could be wrong.

But working as a team… that would be useful, she supposed, since ransacking an office for information was much easier when it was three people as opposed to one.

The key she had stolen slotted neatly into the lock, no surprise. Yet after turning it fully, the resulting clicks telling her the bolts had shifted back, the door handle still wouldn't pop out from the faux-wood. There was no use unlocking a door if you could not turn the handle.

"Must have DNA scanning… uhh…" Taurus pulled a face that looked suspiciously like a pout, then with one hand, combed the main body of his quiff back with his fingers. A nervous quirk? Although other than that he was acting confident and sure of himself – almost cocky at times, in fact – and so maybe he was not who she thought him to be. The boy she had known could never have changed so dramatically. "Maybe we should have, kept that guy around?"

"Yeah, maybe we should have. Well done, you finally figure it out. Fucking gold stars all round. Listen, I had everything under control here, so I don't know why fish-face felt the need to send you two in as backup or whatever."

The looks that went round following her words all spoke the same message. They all knew who the others were, yet decided to avoid baggage from the past and would, instead, pretend that they were all complete strangers with this strange woman. It was easier.

"Well… we didn't, uhh, know you'd be here, either."

"We don't have time for all thith. That man ith gonna call thecurity and we'll have failed. The camerath are already all focuthed on uth."

"Fuck," Scorpio spat. "Well they've already got a good look at our faces, so we may as well just break in-"

"No." Gemini's voice was stern. "If they know that we know the information, then it putth them in the pothithion of power."

"Well it's a bit late for that! We've got to get the information or the Condesce will flip her shit! Anyway, we shouldn't even be talking about this here, they'll be able to hear us."

Gemini gave an irritated look at the camera focused on them, then motioned the two of them closer. Barely raising the volume of his voice above 'silent'. Most microphones would not be able to pick such sounds up, nor would regular people, but with how the mutations affected their hearing, Taurus and Scorpio could just about pick up what he was saying.

"How about thith. We pretend that we've done thomething to the camerath, act like now they won't be able to thee what we're doing, and then thteal it."

"Uhh… I don't see why we can't just, uh, steal it."

"Becauthe then, they  _don't_  know that we know, that they know, that we know."

"What?"

"Bluh, okay, they are not aware of the fact that we have confirmed our thuthpicionth that they know we have read the information. They don't even know we have thuthpicionth about them, they will be completely obliviouth. Better?" said Gemini, sarcasm lacing his words. "It meanth we'll have an angle on them, even if it'th pretty non-exithtential."

"Oh, uh, okay then."

Gemini then took something from his jacket pocket, an old style USB by the looks of it, and held it against the side of the camera. After a few seconds of this, he got down from his tiptoes and placed the cuboid of metal and plastic back into his pocket.

"That thould have put the camera feedth on a loop, and scrambled the micth." he announced in a normal tone of voice, only slightly hushed in case any guests or staff found their way to where they were working. The boy then crouched before the keyhole, and, shifting the dark glasses he wore up a little, opened just one eye a crack. From this a narrow beam of blue tinted energy shot from his eye and began to work its way through the thick metal of the door.

The heat coming from this was near unbearable as the metal began to melt and run down the door, creating sparks that bounced off Gemini's thick skin near harmlessly.

"Is that a fire retardant tuxedo?" Scorpio frowned in disbelief.

"You mean that'th  _not_  a fire retardant dreth?"

"My means of getting into locked rooms doesn't involve using my eyes as a blowtorch, so it was not necessary to wear something weird like that." she chuckled in that low, husky voice of hers.

The locks inside the door were disabled and the door handle popped out for them. They were in.

Once inside this room, however, they were horrified to find that its owner was just as messy as they were, with papers scattered about in unorganized piles on the desk, floor and shelves. And as for the filling cabinets, well, it was good that none of them were particularly what you would call 'neat-freaks'.

"This is going to take decades!" complained Scorpio as she took in the sight before her. "And it looks like someone's already been sent in before us."

"One of uth?" Gemini asked as he broke the camera, and properly this time.

"No idea. While the Condesce does do things like send in multiple mutants, I don't think she'd send in more than three. And if someone's already got the information, then she'd order us out."

"Who ith thith Condethce?" Gemini said, as Vriska had forgotten that it was only her and two of the other mutants that had met her.

"Oh, I meant Doc Scratch."

Taurus paused to think for a moment, before deciding, "We should look anyway."

And so they did.

While Scorpio and Taurus sifted through the masses of paper before them, giving the words on the sheet a quick scan before moving on, Gemini was at the computer, installing some weird program or something of the sort that allowed him to quickly sift through the files.

They searched for a few minutes, before Gemini announced, "Got something."

"Then download it and let's get going. Someone's going to come at any minute." She dumped the pile of papers back down in front of her, then stood and rushed to the door, peering down the corridors.

"Wait, I think I've, uh, found something too."

"Then take a photo and put it back quick."

Gemini suddenly leapt to his feet, sliding the USB into a pouch hanging from his neck, presumably so it was harder to lose.

"Great, let's go."

They quickly left the room, descending the staircase and merging seamlessly with the dancing couples. From there they briefly split to avoid suspicion, before she worked her way to the door, careful to avoid the gaze of the man she had been using. Once outside, she shivered violently. As the night had dragged on, the temperature had dropped significantly, as one would expect in mid-December. She really should have brought a jacket or something; the fur boa was doing little to keep her arms warm, and thanks to the slit in the dress, her legs were freezing.

"Cold?" With that low drawl, it had to be Taurus.

She turned to find the boys behind her, and trying to make sure her teeth didn't chatter too much, replied, "Yeah. Dresses weren't made to be worn in f-fucking December."

"You, uhh, want my jacket or something?" he offered, but was met with a firm shake of her head.

"Don't feel the need to offer that. It's-s my fault for not bringing a coat." she shrugged.

"Uh, are you sure?"

"I'm a big girl, I can deal with my own mistakes," Scorpio smirked, pulling the fur closer around her body. At least she hadn't worn heels. Although at a comfortable six foot two (the mutation had more side effects that she had initially noticed), she had no need for such things. "Are we getting the lift back from the same person or…?"

"If we got different rideth in, then probably not."

"Well then. Taurus, wasn't it?"

"Uh, yes?"

"I'm going to need your photo of the information you found."

"I thought you, uh, dealt with your own mistakes?" smirked Taurus.

"There is a difference between getting a bit cold because you forgot to bring a coat, and getting torn apart for failing the fucking mission."

"Well, uh, I shouldn't… I mean…" Taurus paused for a moment, thinking it through, before relenting and swapping his camera with hers.

"Thank youuuuuuuu!" she crooned, that smirk of hers still etched onto her face, before Scorpio turned and sashayed away. Until, that is…

"Wait, Vriska!"

And with that, the unspoken agreement of pretending they did not know each other, shattered. And Vriska, not wanting to confront Tavros and Sollux, simply ran.

* * *

"Do you think that I'm stupid?" asked the Condesce as she took the photo from Tavros's camera. "I know full well that this isn't your camera. Although kudos, I guess, for stealing it when you had no information."

"Thank you," Vriska muttered. After countless slaps, she had gotten rather more subdued around the woman. Respectful, almost. Besides, mind control did not work on her, much to the blue-blood's dismay. The punishment for his failed attempt had been horrific. "We grouped together, and they both found information with my help. But I then realized we would be split again, so I took Taurus's camera, and swap-"

The tyrian-blood interrupted with, "We?" And this single syllable managed to flood Vriska's body with a sudden surge of worry. What if the two mutants she was with weren't who she thought they were?

"Uh, Gemini and Taurus…?"

With a horrifically long pause, the Condesce then nodded. "Continue."

"Well, I thought that you may be… unimpressed if I appeared without any information."

"You  _know_  I would be," the Condesce grinned, her shark-like teeth glinting in the low-light of her office. "The punishment would be very severe. But since you took the initiative to take his information, then it will be him that gets the punishment. I'm sure he knew as-"

"Wai-"

SMACK.

A familiar stinging sensation spread across Vriska's cheek, the light slap being the reminder that she should have stayed silent, according to the Condesce. She had not been slapped in a while, in fact. It seemed the woman was in an abnormally good mood as of late…

So Tavros had known what would happen to him if he swapped his camera with hers? He knew that he would get punished, but took it anyway just to please her? Vriska wasn't certain on how she was supposed to feel about that…

"Oh dear. Did you not realize that? Well, it's too late now," She looked at the photos from the document Tavros had unearthed with a small, satisfied smile, before adding, "You are free to go. The Handmaid is waiting for you outside."

"Well it's a fucking reunion today, isn't it?" Vriska muttered, before dashing out the door.

Waiting in the corridor, as the tyrian-blood had promised, stood the Handmaid, tall as ever. Although with the growth spurt that Vriska had gone through lately, she did not look nearly as looming and daunting as she used to.

"I see you haven't made a mess of my dress, kiddo. Good," She gave a quick glance down at her overalls, a grim look on her face before looking back at the dress she once wore. "Maybe one day I'll find an excuse to wear it again."

The errand boy that was supposed to meet them never came, which was when the Handmaid decided that, really, after eleven years in the retainment organization, she probably knew her way around it by now, so she attempted to lead the way. Their destination was Group Eight's training room.

Most of the other mutants were asleep, with the exception of a strange team of them, consisting of rainbow-drinkers… whatever the hell that was. Was it even a thing? Eridan claimed so, but his rumors were often on the farfetched side of reality, so Vriska always took them with a hefty portion of salt.

"When do you want the dress back?"

"As soon as possible. Although I'd kinda appreciate it if you didn't just strip down in front of me to take it off." replied the older woman with a smirk.

"Well then today's your unlucky day. I wasn't planning to."

"Oh! You save that for Eridan then, do you?" the Handmaid chuckled, while Vriska could do little more than splutter. "Get it to me when we next meet. It shouldn't be too long."

"Fine. But me and Eridan are nothing like that, how many fucking times! We're, uh, kismewhatevers."

"Kismesis?"

"Yes, kismesississ."

"Kismesissitude?"

"Whatever it's called."

"Where you really  _really_  hate someone's guts?"

"Yes! Exactly that!"

"Like… a particularly potent arch-rivalship?"

"Yes. A kismesissitude."

"And, of course, you'll know that this is also as much of a sexual relationship as a matespritship, right?"

"Fucks sake."

The Handmaid laughed, amused at how easily she had led Vriska down that path to teasing, before she was interrupted by an errand boy appearing.

"You are needed in the Red Team's sleeping area."

"Listen, Bearcat. You're going to have to go ahead on your own. I'll be along shortly. The training room is pretty close by, you'll be fine."

And Vriska, feeling grown-up and special in her dress, decided that she was  _fine_  with this, that  _of course_  she knew her way, and that she  _didn't even need_  an errand boy, because come on, she was  _seventeen now_  and knew her way around this shitbag like the back of her hand.

So in the space of about three minutes, she found herself completely lost, wandering the winding corridors. The architecture reminded her oddly of coral, the way the blank, white walls seemed to branch off in odd patterns. Of course, the fact that it looked like a sea-creature did little to alleviate the fact that she hadn't a clue where she was in the facility.

No one was around, not even errand boys conveying messages and guiding the mutants around. Or medics swapping information on certain patients after a rough mission. Odd.

What was that technique for finding one's way out of a maze again? Something to do with only taking rights… or was it lefts? It probably did not matter either way, so she decided upon only rights.

But before long she found herself in exactly the same place as she was before.

"Great."

Picking a corridor at random, Vriska then walked down it, hoping that at some point she might meet someone. Which she didn't.

As she continued along the path, she noticed a gradual decline in its appearance. While it was still clean, the once white walls had taken on a slightly beige colour to them, there were the beginnings of cracks forming along where the wall and ceiling met, and the light fixtures were starting to show their age. All in all, this section of the retainment organization was a little run down.

Vriska frowned, contemplating what this meant. It was probably that this was the oldest part of T.R.O.L.L… hmm… the Condesce probably would not be too pleased if she found that she was here.

But now she was intrigued, and so she continued down the path, which ended with a door. A disturbingly simple looking door, made of a dark wood with a pin tumbler lock. The handle waited innocently outside the door, which was odd since in their time if the door was locked, the handle remained securely inside the door.

' _Looks like it's from the start of the century_ ,' she mused. ' _Maybe even from before then…_ '

With a quick glance around, she reached out and jiggled the handle. Locked. So this was definitely an old door.

Then, after a devious grin, she slid a hair-grip from her locks and began to work on unpicking it. Suddenly those lessons on picking old-style locks from the Handmaid seemed a lot more useful. In fact… it was almost as if she had planned this? But surely she could not know beforehand where the Brit would wander to…

Click! With a final shake of the pin, the door was unlocked.

Slowly, slowly, she twisted the handle and opened the door a crack, peering in. The sight she saw was enough to make her curious, and so she slid inside, clenching the ruined hair-grip in her hand.

The room was dark, large and circular, with a sunken pit in the centre. This was the part of the room that intrigued her. From the ceiling twisted many tendrils of fuchsia, looking almost like tentacles as they tumbled towards the bottom of the pit.

Silently jogging towards this pit, she looked down and gagged. The sight before her made her quickly cover her mouth, hoping that the pasta she had eaten earlier would not make a reappearance. For even Vriska with her strong stomach was disgusted by what lay in the pit.

Suspended several metres off the ground by the tentacles from above, with more coming up from beneath to support the form, was the body of a man – a mutant in fact.

At the sound of the gag, he turned his head and looked up at her, eyes hidden behind a strange pair of goggles. He did not say anything, simply angled his eyes towards where he had heard her.

Vriska remained completely still. He could not see her, but he could still hear her. Maybe if she remained still long enough he would not notice her? A primal fear sat heavy within her at the sight of the man caught up in the tendrils, and as soon as he looked away she decided she would run. But he did not look away.

"Hello?" His voice was low and rough, indicating that he had not spoke to someone in a long time. When she did not reply, he stared at the spot where he had heard the noise for a while longer, before looking down again.

**== > Speak to him**

And he looked so bored and miserable, that Vriska indeed blurted, "Who are you?"

The speed at which he looked up was utterly pitiful, and Vriska found herself slowly walking towards a set of stairs that jutted out towards where he was suspended. Yet she did not go down them just yet, she needed to make certain he would not attack her.

"I won't hurt you. Trutht me, you wouldn't be high on my hitlitht if I could actually move," He jiggled his arms about a bit to prove his point. It seemed he really couldn't move, so Vriska moved down a few steps and sat down. "I gueth you could call me the Thiioniic. You mutht be Mindfang'th granddaughter, am I right?"

"I have no idea. I don't know my grandparents on my dad's side, and my mum's mum died when she was still a kid. She was murdered or something."

"The Thummoner, no doubt."

"What? The thumb owner?"

At this, the Psiioniic's mouth set in a hard line, and Vriska decided that maybe it was best if she did not piss him off too much.

A relatively awkward silence then followed.

Noticing the blue and red glow from behind his goggles, the Brit asked, "So can you shoot lasers from your eyes or something?"

With a sigh, he replied, "Optic blathth?"

She nodded.

"Then yeth."

The girl then sat and thought for a while.

He stared at her dress, making sure his assumption was right, before demanding, "Ithn't that the Handmaid'th dreth?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I was borrowing it." she shrugged.

"Tho…" An uncomfortable look passed his face, which was quickly replaced with concern as he continued with, "How ith she?"

"You mean how is she? Uh, I don't know, she looks fine, I gue- oh!" At the 'oh' her face twisted into a wide smirk as she leaned her face on the palms of her hands. Their faces were now level with each other, allowing her to see quite clearly the etchings of wrinkles and scars on his skin.

Vriska knew full well what that look meant. She had seen it countless times on Eridan's face when he spoke of Feferi. It was the look someone had when they were worried for someone they loved… but… this man looked to be in his late thirties to early forties, same as the Condesce, and yet the Handmaid was only in her early twenties at most. If it had been familial love then she would not have had an issue, but it seemed to her that he remembered the Handmaid in a less than platonic way. Eww.

"Do you like her?"

"What? Thith ith hardly the time for your teenage anticth."

"Teenage antics? What does that even mean?"

"It meanth that adolethcenth are ruled by their hormoneth. Now I athked you a quethtion. How ith the Handmaid?"

"Ugh, maaaaaaaan," Vriska huffed. "She's fine, okay! But what is it with you and this crush or whatever you have on her? It's pretty creepy. You could almost be her dad."

"I am certain you do not underthtand what ith happening."

"Trust me, I am smart, I have this figured out." she grinned smugly.

"You don't know anything!" the Psiioniic roared, making Vriska skitter back a little at the sight of electricity crackling around his eyes.

"Okay okay! Jesus, I don't know anything, fine!" she said quickly, hoping it would placate the man, because she kind of had more questions for him.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, the man stared at her, willing himself to calm down.

"You remind me of someone," she commented once he seemed calm again. "You look like Sollux, kind of. And you lisp in the same way."

"He'th my grandthon, I should hope tho." he replied gruffly.

"What? How? Unless you were ten when you had him, or something stupid like that."

With a sad, tired chuckle, the Psiioniic said, "I can thee why you would think that."

"Is it because you're a mutant?" she continued, unfazed.

"Mutant? I'm no mutant. If anything, I am a hybrid."

Eyebrows pulled tightly together, Vriska frowned, "What? Nice try. But it is not like I'm any different to you, so I don't see why you're being so laaaaaaaame."

"The Condethce…" the Psiioniic joined her frowning, before giving his head a shake. "You theem like a good enough kid… I gueth. So lithten. There are a group of you, named after horothcopes, right?"

He waited for Vriska to nod, before continuing, "You, the twelve of you, are all dethcended from a group of… very thpecial people. The original twelve of uth were thelected and thent away from, uh, thomewhere in order to create tholdiers. But we are only copieth of the twelve, and I gueth that you are copieth of copieth, then."

"Wait wait wait wait. What the fuck?"

"Thith ith hard! Bathically, the greatetht of our race, thome alive, thome dead, were cloned and sent to variouth pointh around the planet once we were thirteen yearth old at… I don't know, thometime at the beginning of the twenty firtht century."

"And let me guess, you had to 'do the dirty' with the locals, as soon as possible, right?" Vriska said, hanging quotations in the air while she put on the Handmaid's accent. "Come on. As if the whole world hasn't heard this plot before."

"Will you let me continue? So yeth, our mithion, I gueth you could call it, wath to produce many offthpring. Which we all did, I gueth. Well, I cannot thay that about the Handmaid. She only had one daughter ath far ath I know. Thethe dethcendantth did not have our powerth, or if they did they were weak, but thome were mentally and phythically wrong. It wath the next generation which would be of interetht to the Condethce."

"The mutants? Which is why they're suddenly all appearing?"

"Exactly. But only one exact replica of the original would appear, which ith you twelve. All the retht are incomplete in thome way, however they are thtill useful, which ith why the Condethce keepth them."

Ignoring the fact that his words meant her sister could well have powers similar to hers, she asked, "Wait, why does she want soldiers with insane powers anyway?"

"Ith it not obviouth? She theemth to have forgotten that she'th only a clone, and ith going to thtart attacking. She wanth to take over."

"Why?"

"She'th an inthane fithh woman. Why do you think?"

For a while, Vriska looked concerned and confused, however it was soon replaced with mockery. "Yeah, because I'm going to believe a crazy old man in a locked up room. I'm not stupid. Anyway, even if this did happen, I can just not listen to her. Free will, remember? Mind control doesn't hurt either."

You do realithe she took your eye a while ago, right?"

"Well, I got a new one put in after the old one broke."

"She extracted thomething from it, what maketh you able to control people. The purple mitht wath a prototype of the product she'th been making. She's perfected it now. She'll thlip it into your food, and inthantly you'll all be under her control. Completely."

So… that was why the Condesce looked so much like Feferi… she was an older version of her. Same with the Psiioniic and Sollux. Not to mention that the mind controlling… thing was pretty disturbing. Although really, how different was it from Vriska's own powers?

"When is she going to do this?"

"Like I thaid. About a week, I cannot be more accurate than that." he sighed.

"But then, if you're one of these amazing ancestors, whatever that's supposed to mean, why are you stuck down here covered in purple tentacles?"

"That'th a long thtory. Bathically, I…" And then his face seemed to light up… to some extent. "I control the power to thith facility. A battery, if you will. The Condethce imprisoned me."

"And the reason you are getting excited is…?"

"If I created a power thurge big enough, I could short-circuit the thythtem and create a blackout. If you were in exactly the right place at the right time, you could potentially use thith to ethcape."

Gazing down at him, Vriska slowly raised an eyebrow. "And the reason you're suddenly jumping to help me is?"

"You're from Group Eight. Both my grandthon and the Handmaid are tied to you in thome form. If we went through with thith, you mutht promithe that you'd take thothe two with you.

"Oh wow, yeah, so presuming you can create this powersurge at the right time and place, while all four of us are conveniently placed at the right place at the right time and  _do_  escape, you do realize, of course, that the Condesce has nanobots implanted into the walls of our hearts. If we so much as leave the boundaries of this shithole without her permission, those nanobots will kill us."

To her surprise, he laughed.

"She'th lying to you, there are no nanobots. The mutantth killed in the village thcenario were killed by thniperth and then absorbed by the floor. It had nothing to do with nanobots at all. You're too preciouth to her; thomeone elthe could reprogram them and kill you."

"Okay okay. So if I did believe you, which I don't, where would be have to be?"

"You'd have to get the Handmaid in on it, or you would have no chance at all. Even with all of your combined thkillth, I'd thtill thay get ath clothe to the entrance ath you can uthing the Handmaid'th clearance, then when the power goeth out, run."

"The Handmaid? But she's employed by the Condesce? I can't see why she'd let us escape."

He shook his head. "She'th ath much a prithoner ath you. Anyway, go through the door, over the fence and into the dethert."

"Into the desert? We'd be dead in hours, it's too much. We'd have no supplies or anything."

"Motht people have forgotten thith, but there ith a hidden catacomb of tunnelth beneath a large area of the United Thtateth. Find an entrance to thith and you'll be thafe. Any tracking deviceth won't work underground with all the rock, and there should thtill be rethourceth and the like from the war."

Well… the blue-blood had to admit that she was being swayed by this idea. Even if it was coming from some crazy guy she'd stumbled upon by accident. The simple idea of freedom enamored her, and so she asked, "When will this power surge happen?"

"Three dayth time at thometime in the late evening. I cannot do exact timeth, ath the only meanth I have to tell the time ith the thky." With a quick gaze upwards at the constellations passing by his window, he then said, "Good luck."

And with a final smirk, Vriska said, "Don't worry. I have aaaaaaaall of the luck."

* * *

Reuniting with the Handmaid after her little escapade was the first issue, and once this was done, Vriska then had the tricky task of getting the Condesce to merge their group together once more. After an hour of arguing, and honestly near the end, some pleading, She relented, appearing to be none the wiser about her and the Psiioniic's little chat.

Group Eights first proper meet up after over three years apart was strained to say the least. Sollux had still not gotten over the fact that Vriska had used him to kill Aradia, which was fair enough. And needless to say, Tavros was not particularly pleased over the whole thing either. When she attempted to explain the plan to them, they scoffed at her and left her to her own devices for the rest of the training session.

Once they left for dinner (she still did not want to risk eating with the rest of the mutants) Vriska attempted to talk to the Handmaid. Telling her that she had spoken to the Psiioniic and he had a plan for them. Initially, she had been hesitant to tell her about it, even if the Psiioniic was convinced she would be in on it. But had decided it was worth a shot.

"The Psiioniic?" The Handmaid sighed loudly, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. "Yeah, that sounds just like him. Well, he did have a good head on him back in the day, but recently his mind's been fallin' apart. He's been trapped in that room for nearly a century without any form of mental stimulation," Then with a snort, added, "Well, except for the Condesce's visits."

"What?"

"Between you and me, I'm pretty sure the Condesce is stuck on him. I mean likes him."

"No way!"

The Handmaid nodded, glad she could talk to someone about this. "Anyway, so yes, I guess I could give this plan of yours a whirl."

Another brief training session followed this, with Vriska fighting against Tavros, who had greatly improved since she had last fought him. Lucky, with all of the training she'd had to endure with the Condesce, Vriska had improved as well.

It was… fun. Both knew they were unlikely to land a hit on the other, so they were unreserved with giving the swipes and stabs their all. With having to lug the lance about as a weapon, Tavros's arm muscles had developed nicely; a fact that Vriska casually noticed.

The Handmaid subtly spoke about the plan to the boys, careful to avoid the microphones and cameras about the room. From her, they agreed to it, and so it was decided that they would go through with it.

Following a deserved shower, the blue-blood left to her room. After a near attack from Sollux a month or so following Aradia's death, where he had molten a hole in Vriska's sleeping pod with his lasers, the Brit had been given her own room in a different section of the retainment organization.

It was sparse, to the say the least, with only a bed and a small bedside table. And today, luckily, there was no Eridan waiting for her. While she would gladly beat that kid up, as she was in a vicious mood after being beaten by Tavros, she needed to think the plan through. Besides, all he was wanting to do recently was kiss, which was kinda really lame. Although she did appreciate the company.

In fact… maybe she could have done with someone to distract her mind before this big escapade. If there was one thing Eridan was good at (other than infuriating her) was distracting her…

* * *

**== > Enough Vriska, wow. Be the Handmaid, and escape**

You are now the Handmaid, a couple of minutes before the escape

Watching the three members of Group Eight doing something as mediocre as cleaning a stain from the wall was amusing to say the least.

One of their newer groups of mutants had an accident the day prior, which involved a dubious brownish-red stain being created on the wall. When the Handmaid had heard Doc Scratch complaining about this, she immediately volunteered her group for clean up duty, because 'they've been kicking up a fuss lately' and 'need some good old fashioned labor to fix them up'.

He had wholeheartedly agreed, and that was why Vriska, Tavros and Sollux were now scrubbing at a stained wall with soapy sponges, the view of the orange desert only a couple dozen metres away. Of course, said desert was through three sheets of steel-reinforced glass doors, all electronically locked with camera's at every angle and a security guard at the far end of the room.

It was when Vriska began to complain about how her arm was sore, that the lights went out and immediately all of the equipment they were holding was dropped and the mad dash for the desert began.

The first door was opened with a blast of Sollux's eye-lasers. Usually, the glasses would have been locked to his face to prevent him injuring the staff, however the Handmaid had the key to them, and oddly enough they were not locked.

The second door was slammed open with a slab of telekinetic energy. Turned out that the Handmaid could do such things.

The third and final door took two attempts to open. First, Vriska tried to control the guard before it into opening it, but he had a strange band shielding his eyes that prevented her from making the necessary connection. Turned out without any electricity it was open anyway, however, and so they ran through into the wall of heat from the sun.

Only the gate to go, which was easily dealt with by a combination of optic blasts and telekinesis.

And into the desert, they ran and ran and ran, not stopping even when their limbs were exhausted and sweat ran down their backs.

Not even when Tavros noticed the lone tear running down the Handmaid's face.

* * *

End of part two.

**== > Leave The Retainment Organization for Lucid Liathdaonna.**

* * *

Your name is Karkat Vantas.

You have a passion for RIDICULOUSLY TERRIBLE ROMANTIC MOVIES AND ROMCOMS. You should really be EMBARRASSED for liking this DREADFUL CINEMA, but for some reason you are not. You like to program computers, but you are NOTORIOUSLY PRETTY AWFUL AT IT. Your programs invariably damage the machines on which they are executed, which is just as well, since you like to believe you specialize in COMPUTER VIRUSES.

When you mature, you aspire to join the ranks of the most lethal members of your society, the THRESHECUTIONERS. You like to practice with your REALLY COOL SICKLE, but you just wind up looking like KIND OF A DOOFUS BY YOURSELF IN YOUR ROOM.

A while ago, but not that long ago, your skin started to TURN AN UNAPPEALING HUE OF GREY. You hid it by wearing TURTLENECK SWEATERS for a good chunk of time, but the GREY SPREAD so you RAN AWAY AND HID but through a number of SHENANIGANS you got STABBED IN THE GUT. It was when the paramedics came that they SAW THE GREY and after healing you were SENT OFF TO T.R.O.L.L. Even though you're a mutant blood. They really SAVED YOUR ASS THERE… kind of…

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


End file.
